


Godblood and Dragonheart

by cloverfield



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe with Canon Elements, Angst, Demons, Destruction, Dragons, Dreaming, Fai is Not A Prince, Finding a Reason to Live, Gods and Godmarks, Graphic Violence, Healing Magic, Hope, Hopeful Ending, Kissing on the Battlefield, KuroFai Olympics, KuroFai Olympics 2018, M/M, Mage Knights, Magic, Magical Corruption, Magical Violence, Not Safe For Nick/Newbies, References to War, Royal Bastards, Sacrificing Yourself for the Ones You Love, Sakura is Not A Princess, Samurai, Scars, Self-Inflicted Injury, Self-Sacrifice, Sign Language, Talking To Dead People, Team Gods, Vaguely Taisho Era Japan, Ya’aburnee, big damn kiss, implications of suicidal thoughts, loss of family, lots of gore, magical herbs, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 09:12:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15905271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloverfield/pseuds/cloverfield
Summary: Gods vs. Machine Olympic fic for the prompt 'Ya’aburnee (Arabic): a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how unbearable it would be to live without them'.A masterless knight seeking to aid a healer on a dangerous quest in a distant land finds an oath of his own — in the heart of a man whose past lies in ruins.





	Godblood and Dragonheart

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: this fic contains graphic violence, themes of self-sacrifice, self-inflicted injury, and graphic depiction of wounds. Major character death, references to war, and canon-typical angst also feature, along with loss of life and references to death and the afterlife. Exercise caution, and do not read if you may be discomfited or potentially triggered by the above.
> 
> (I swear, there is actually a hopeful ending here. Really. I promise.)

It was said there were eight million Gods in the islands of Nihon, and every child born on that sacred soil bore the mark of that same godblood — a spiritual claim etched upon the skin at birth by the deity whose aegis they fell under. Of all these blessed souls, at least a hundred thousand alone could be found in the castle-city of Shirasagi, where the Imperial Palace soared stately above the tangled, teeming streets below. In the three days they had spent beneath the eaves of this city, not a single passer-by Fai had seen was unmarked.

The chamberlain before him wore her godmark at her throat as the twining branches of a tree: dark lacework with blooming petals of cornflower blue twisted in its canopies. As she came to a halt, the bell-lined sleeves of her uniform chimed gently, her veil fluttering across her mouth like moth-wings with each breath. “Please enter,” she murmured, sweeping low into a graceful kneel. Her hands upon the edges of the sliding _shoji_ were steady as the door opened, the slip of wood on wood a polished sigh. At his side, Sakura straightened, young shoulders back and chin tipped high. His young charge steeled her spine and breathed out slow with a composure any knight would envy, and Fai could do no less beside her.

Three bows they must make: one upon entering, stepping quietly on stockinged feet across floorboards worn smooth beneath centuries of devoted polish. Fai caught a glimpse of silk draperies lining balconies, of painted walls and engraved pillars, of dark eyes watching and fluttering fans hiding the faces of the noble men and women of the court that looked down from on high. A second bow when they were halfway across the room, lowering themselves further still, and towards the woman standing tall at the foot of the dais. Streaks of shimmering light painted her face with the touch of the sun, each crowning ray glittering gold in a sign of holy favour as it burned down her cheeks— the Regent-General, Sun Goddess Reborn, elder sister and warlord both in gleaming armour with Amaterasu’s godmark writ clear across her skin like a war-standard flying.

For a moment the heat of her gaze pricked sweat across the nape of Fai’s neck like the sun at high noon, skin taut with the knowledge of the death that could come at the merest flicker of her command, for him and Sakura both — but they must have passed some unknown test as she turned aside, the blinds behind her pulled high by unseen hands at her silent signal and the Empress-Regnant coming into view upon the dais proper.

Fai bowed low before he could do more than merely glance at her face. He caught no more than a quick impression of youth and dark hair pooling heavy in her lap; silver flickered at the edge of the glimpse he stole as his head dipped low. The mat at the base of the platform scratched his forehead as he went down to his knees and pressed himself to the floor in supplication, the marks of a thousand others before him worn soft into woven grass. As Fai knelt his breastplate cinched tight across his undershirt, ribs pressing against unyielding metal with the swell of each breath. For many a knight it would be a disgrace to kneel so to a foreign ruler — a violation of vows sworn to the sovereign that set them on the path of fealty, oaths of chivalry cast aside to save one’s own skin. But Fai had neither king nor queen, and no master to pledge himself to besides; only the girl by his side, her small hands crossed as they met before her and pressed down trembling to the weave of the matting as they both prostrated themselves in kind.

For a long moment there was nothing, only the weight of an expectant gaze upon them — but the Empress spoke at last, her voice soft and sweet. “Rise and be known to our court, Fai Fluorite – mage-knight of Ceres and traveller. You have journeyed very far from whence you were born.”

Fai lifted his head with considerable caution — Nihon was known to command the largest standing army this side of Chizeta, and Fai dared not face the fatal consequences should Her Imperial Grace take offence at any sudden move — and took a startled breath to meet the eyes of the girl upon the dais. Violet eyes, and limned by moonlight: godblood dripping silver from the crescent pooling as a crown atop her dark hair, each heavy droplet shimmering down fair skin to stain her gaze with an argent sheen that glistened like tears brimming to be shed.

“Oh — you’re so _beautiful_ ,” said Sakura beside him. The words were a breathless sigh, thoughtless and completely awed, and Fai did not need to fight the urge to whip around to face her; could not move at all, in fact, for the stiffness of his neck and the sudden dread knotting in his gut. A helpless murmur and a kind one, yes, but one so easily taken as insult to the careful ritual of their visit.

But despite his terror, the Empress _giggled_ , one slender hand raised high with her draping sleeve a silken curtain to hide her laughing smile; the smile that Fai could see swimming in violet as her lovely eyes crinkled at their silvered corners, enough that he could see her eyelashes too were dappled with flecks of moonlight.

“And you must be Sakura… in our tongue, your name is one with the spring blossoms on cherry trees,” said the Empress, her voice glowing with laughter. “We thank you for your kindness — it is always our hope to be seen as beautiful in the eyes of so lovely a young maiden.”

This time it was Sakura who flushed — Fai could feel the heat radiating from his young charge as she bowed her head, flustered into silence. Clearly, her wistful comment had been unplanned, and luckily for them both, taken as an honest compliment.

“Sakura,” said the Empress again, and with cooler cadence; the young girl stepping back so that the queenly mask could rise once more. “Healer-apprentice of Clow, and traveller from across the seas. We welcome you to Shirasagi, our blessed home. May the Gods keep and protect you ere you leave our shores once more.” The bells ribboned into dark hair chimed with the gentle dip of her head, and in turn Fai touched his head to his hands once more, Sakura following suit, before they both eased back to look up at the young woman on the dais.

Because she was young, of an age with Sakura herself if Fai were to guess — even though those violet eyes were weighted with ageless sorrow as much as silver. “Word of your journey has reached us anon. You come to ask a boon of us, do you not? Speak your plea so that we may decide.”

Sakura, pink-cheeked but determined, sat taller. “Your Imperial Grace… I am a journeyman healer, apprenticed to the sorceress Yuuko of the Clow Royal Academy. I have been given a quest to prove myself — to find the most powerful of healing herbs and grasses, to bring back their seeds to my desert home.”

This Fai knew. This Fai knew from the moment he met Sakura, looking up at her through swimming eyes as he laid bleeding out in the gutter, saved by the small hands of a young woman who knew him not, but was determined to help him with her own magicks and the carefully-made tinctures of one who strived towards healing the wounds of the world — and not just the unlucky, half-drunk fool stabbed in the back she found left for dead in the slums of Chizeta.

“Clow has little greenery, and even less natural-grown medicinal plants,” continued Sakura, a thread of steel in her voice that spun stronger with every word. “The Royal Academy has spent _centuries_ trying to cultivate more, to strengthen what little we have — and so when I found a historical treatise detailing the trade of secret medicines made from the powerful grasses grown in Nihon, I begged leave to travel and find them for myself.”

Green eyes glinted like chips of jade, like warm sunlight through glass worn smooth by the desert sands, and abruptly Fai had to brace himself against a rush of pride for this young woman on so grave a quest. “There has been no trade between our countries since the ancient sea-roads between us were lost to the storms centuries ago, with how the oceans have risen… I have travelled here through the skyfields of Autozam, across the ice ruins of Valeria and the Crystal Mountains of Cephiro. I ask your permission, Your Imperial Grace — let me travel to the province of Suwa, whose medicinal herbs are famed the world over.”

A hush rang across the court, the kind of quiet that only punctuated the whispers hiding within it, titters and rumours and all sorts of hissed observations of the nobility that lined the balconies of the grand hall. The sweat pricking the back of Fai’s neck dripped down his spine, itchy beneath the cleanest travel clothes he owned and the battered chain-mail vest underneath his breastplate. It was no small thing Sakura asked for — Nihon had closed their gates to external trade for at least the past century, and even daring to _ask_ could get them both thrown in a dungeon somewhere in the bowels of the palace.

“Please,” said Sakura, in a soft voice that did not crack, did not tremble — but the hands laced before her were shaking just a little as she bowed low, touching her forehead to the backs of her fingers. “If I can bring back even a small sample of the greenery Suwa is known for, it would change the life of every soul in the land I call home. A handful of seeds is all I ask!” Another wave of murmurs, susurrant like the tide reaching shore, and Fai could feel many, many eyes boring into his back with the weight of those watching.

Sakura’s plea was an honest one, a wish made to bring healing, but there was no guarantee it would be granted. And what hope there was dimmed as the Empress looked down with her face cool and solemn, young eyes dark with a soft and terrible sadness. “Sakura,” she began, and was cut off before another word, blinking in startlement at the interruption as another voice rang out.

_“We cannot allow you to travel to Suwa.”_

The words were a shock, spoken behind and in the rich timbre reserved for a general on the battlefield. Fai started even as Sakura jerked out of her bow, green eyes wet with shock. “Oh—!”

The General-Regent stepped forward, her gold-lacquered armour gleaming and her eyes as sharp as the sunlight that cut down her face. “To do so would condemn you both to death. There will be no more blood spilt on that cursed soil.” Her face was hard, and her meaning harder, steeled with the command of war.

Fai’s heart twisted in his ribs, a knot of dread twining tight beneath his breast. The look in those eyes — Fai had seen those eyes on the battlefield, seen them in the faces of the men and women who cannot, _will not_ bear more lives lost. It had been years since Fai last fought a war for king and country, but the shadows it left behind were not something one could easily cast aside, and here they were as streaks of darkness across the sun itself. What had _happened_ in the province of Suwa? What had become of a land once known for its medicine, for it to so quickly and so thoroughly disappear from modern memory — for it to bring such dread at just the mention of its name?

“Please — if we could _just_ —” Sakura’s plea fell unheard but for the sudden movement of the Empress-Regnant, standing tall and solemn on her dais as she challenged her sister with her presence alone. For a moment, Fai saw a conversation unfolding: the sun and moon in celestial convergence as two women spoke without a single word between them. Sakura trembled, her fingers pressed tight to her mouth, her face pale and her shoulders tight with the same nerves Fai could feel winding like a spring in his gut.

The singing tension between two women so powerful they carried the heavens in their blood snapped at last, and the General, her livery blazing with Amaterasu’s own glory, was eclipsed; a yielding bow signified her surrender, bending low before her sister and Empress both.

With a sigh, the Empress-Regnant lifted a small hand for silence, Tsukuyomi’s own grace upon her shoulders. It tumbled down like a curtain, heavy and velvet as it swept the hall. She shook her head gently, bells chiming music in the fall of her hair, and the silver tears that trailed down her cheeks shimmered. “We cannot allow you to travel to Suwa _alone_.” Her eyes, when they opened at last, were sad and soft and glowing, rippling silver flickering in a current of some strange power Fai could not begin to understand. His skin tightened beneath the chill of her gaze. “If we are to allow this, then we must be certain,” she said softly.

“We understand your knight believes he can protect you,” the Empress declared, and hoar-struck eyes rested heavy upon Fai, as distant and lovely as the winter moon herself. “A brave soul indeed, to wager doom of self for a quest not his own.” Under such scrutiny, Fai could do naught but shiver, even as it passed over him like a shadow. “There is a danger in Suwa: one that brings darkness, one that will bring ruin upon any who venture beyond the barrier. For the two of you to journey there is to risk death. Tell me, Sakura — would you challenge such to bring your people hope? Would you risk a life, _your_ life and the life of your companion pledged in your care, for the chance to find the medicine you seek?”

Sakura tipped her chin with a determination Fai knew well, small hands fisted upon the mat, jaw tight and eyes burning. “ _Yes_.”

“Then so be it.” That bright and terrible moonlight dimmed as the Empress smiled, the expression so sad and so, so gentle. “You may seek the medicinal herbs of Suwa at your own peril, but you will not do so unescorted. By the grace of our mercy, you will be given a guide — one who knows the land and the darkness that stalks it.”

Beside the dais there was movement: the General-Regent giving command with murmured voice and quick, sharp movement of her fingers to the figures waiting in the wings. Two shadows peeled free from innumerable ranks, disappearing quickly into the recesses beyond the great hall. Whoever was meant to escort Sakura, it was someone well-known, if the General could anticipate the command before the Empress even spoke their name.

“To travel to Suwa is many weeks on foot, and only slightly less by carriage,” continued the Empress, unbothered by the movement around her. “Pray tell your plans have taken such into account.”

Sakura, still shaken but undeterred, nodded fiercely. “Yes, Your Imperial Grace. It was our intention to journey to the closest province by steam locomotive — almost two days aboard — and then travel on horseback to Suwa proper.”

The Empress inclined her head gently, the lights of the many electric lanterns glowing upon the crescent in her hair. “Our escort will meet you at the Shirasagi Central Station an hour after dawn tomorrow morning, to join you in your travels and guide your way to Suwa. You would do well to prepare, Sakura, for your mission is one rife with danger. We wish you success, and will hold you in our prayers.”

Fai had half the inkling that perhaps they would survive yet, his skin still prickling with the realisation of how easily everything could have gone so very wrong, when the Empress sought his eye once more. His breath caught, a tangle that hooked him into silence before he even thought to speak. “Sir Knight — you would do well to prepare yourself also. We grant our blessing on the condition that you both return hale. We will not have so young and brave a soul die alone in a land far from her home, and nor will we see so fine a figure of chivalry lost to save her. We expect to see you both return to the palace with news of success.”

Even if Fai would object, he had not the words to — of course he could not let Sakura die, of course he would keep her safe and damn the world that wished otherwise. He had no intention of death himself, either; he’d lived through too damn much to bother giving up now. “Yes, Your Imperial Grace. I will protect both our lives with every skill I possess.”

“Thank you,” said Sakura softly, and if her voice was thin with shock, Fai could not blame her: seven months of travel, and more years than Fai could ever know had led to this moment, this plea so swiftly answered. “Your Imperial Grace — Clow will not forget your kindness.”

The Empress smiled once more, and this time there was something more than the solemnity of a sovereign in it: a glint of hope in moon-kissed eyes, the hint of a young girl’s smile. “When you succeed, Sakura of Clow, the whole of Nihon will remember yours.”

* * *

Shirasagi Central Station was awash with activity even so early in the morning, the beating heart of the city pumping people through transit as locomotives arrived and departed in great gusts of steam. The sidewalks and byways were crowded, commuters drifting quickly past in knots of merchants and uniformed officers and restauranteurs and fishmongers and construction workers — even a young gaggle of school-children under the watchful eye of their teacher, bobbing along in coloured pinafores and tiny polished shoes. On one and all godmarks could be seen ablaze on faces and hands and arms beneath the morning light flooding through stained-glass windows, a thousand thousand lives under the aegis of their Gods, and Fai and Sakura standing alone to watch them pass beneath the great clock tower that chimed the hour past dawn.

“You’re sure you don’t want some?” asked Sakura, once the bell finished tolling. There was rice stuck to her cheek, the toasted _onigiri_ in her cupped hands steaming through its paper wrapper, and the scent of roast chestnuts was tantalising, even as she took a cheerful bite.

“Thank you, but no.” It wasn’t as though they hadn’t eaten a hurried breakfast earlier at the inn — soup and rice and grilled fish, the latter of which Fai had handed over to Sakura in its whole portion — but Sakura was not just a growing young woman in the flower of youth, but a magic user also: such power burned through energy almost as quickly as the body could consume it. It had been _decades_ since Fai himself was a prentice mage, but the hunger that had eaten a hole in his belly was something one never forgot. “I’d sooner keep looking — all that was said was that we would be sure to know our escort when we saw him.” Which was quite possibly the least helpful advice the chamberlain could have given them: no word on his appearance, his name, or even his godmark.

“He’s probably looking for us too,” said Sakura, swallowing around another mouthful of toasted rice. That, Fai could believe, seeing how many curious looks had already been sent their way. “We stand out a lot, so if one of us stays by the clock tower and the other goes searching, we’re sure to cross his path.”

“Perhaps.” The crowd beneath Fai’s gaze pulsed and swelled with the arrival of another train, billowing coalsmoke a bitter taste on his tongue. Across the tracks a woman kissed her lover goodbye, a tearful farewell enfolded with an embrace as stars blazed upon her cheek. Closer to where they stood a suited woman sat on a wooden bench, coat flaring wide and newspaper rustling as she turned inkstained pages with a frown; the swallow mark upon her left hand jumped and fluttered with every irritated flick of her fingers. The man beside her laughed obliviously with a toddler bouncing joyfully on his lap, smacking happy kisses on a chubby face speckled with flower petals shimmering pink.

Fai frowned. “I don’t think we should separate. We were told to wait here, and if we branch out, we could easily miss our mark.” Despite assurances, Fai had enough doubt that if they were to miss the man due to meet them, they would not be offered another escort — the grace of the Empress was a nice thought, but hardly a binding oath, and if they lost one escort so kindly given it was highly unlikely they would find her so accommodating a second time around. Fai sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he huffed out a heavy breath. “Finish your breakfast — your _second_ breakfast — and if there’s no sign by then, I’ll go to the station office and ask for assistance in finding—”

“Finding me?”

The dark voice by his ear was a shock down his spine, one only narrowly kept from turning into the lashing violence of triggered instinct. Fai was not some fledgling squire to be snuck up on, but a veteran of several wars and a mage-knight with mastery besides — _how_ in the seven hells of Gehenna had _anyone_ crept upon them without him noticing?

“Oh!” Sakura’s cry was as delighted as Fai was quietly horrified. “Hello, sir — you must be our escort. Pleased to meet you!” A small hand was immediately stuck out of the field of Fai’s vision, presumably for the man behind him to shake in greeting; Sakura’s smile-turned-frown was sign enough it was refused, even without the hesitant way she lowered it. “Um, sorry… I forgot that no one shakes hands in Nihon.” She sketched a quick bow then, still clutching to her half-eaten breakfast, and with all the dignity afforded a knight (even one fallen so low), Fai steeled himself to turn slowly.

“Well met,” was what he said, voice even despite the offence and the heavy thumping of a startled heart. “We are grateful for your assistance in helping us travel to Suwa Province.”

Dark eyes met Fai’s own, and again his heart thumped: a visceral squeeze that thinned the breath in his lungs. Dark eyes and dark hair and dark his countenance; a cloth mask clinging over nose, mouth and chin to slide smoothly down the throat of a man clad in a black, brass-buttoned coat with stark lines of heavy fabric pressed and pleated as for a soldier on parade. It was clearly the uniform of the Imperial Guard, the badge at his breast and the frogging at its cuffs and collar made that obvious enough. The incongruity of the mask was startling — why would any soldier in uniform need to hide his face? — but Fai could not deny the man wearing it cut an intimidating figure, with his height and his build and the long tail of his hair tumbling heavy over one broad shoulder.

“Don’t be.” The clinging cloth rippled over his lips as they moved, and his low voice was weary. “Only a fool would make for that cursed place.” There was no sign of his godmark, at least from what Fai could see —but then there was not very much of dusky brown skin on display at all. Fai had heard the larger and more obviously visible one’s mark, the thicker the godblood that flowed in the bearers veins, but there was no reason he could think of that suggested one had to place their mark upon display for all to see.

“Well, then maybe I’m a fool,” said Sakura brightly, but with a hard light in her eyes and a firm edge to her smile that showed how a young woman could climb mountains and cross the seas to find herself in Nihon, a world away from the desert she was born from. “But I’m a fool on a _quest_ , and it’s one you’ve been assigned to help with. I’m Sakura, a journeyman healer—”

“From Clow, apprenticed to the witch Yuuko.” Dark eyes, _black_ eyes, eerie in the sheer pitch of their gaze, flicked over Sakura with such ill-mannered contempt it served to raise Fai’s hackles. “The Empress has sworn me to protect and aid you, no matter the danger you blunder into.” That same scorching gaze tracked to Fai next, and there was no difference in that assessment: cool disdain, and no small dislike for what he saw. “Fai Fluorite, wandering mage-knight and escort. Ceresian raised, if not Ceresian born—”

The hot static crackle of magic unshed seared Fai’s palm as his fingers twitched, all his nerves pricked as he squashed down the sudden rise of bile from his gut at how this man could _possibly_ know—

“—a stray picked up from the gutter that should have been left there.” Sharp eyes narrowed further with something _almost_ like begrudging respect. “Though if you really are a blooded knight, you’ll be somewhat useful in a fight.”

“More than useful,” said Fai coolly. Sparks tingled in his fingertips, a warning that his magic was so very close to the surface. “I’d wager I’ve survived more battles than you’ve had hot baths.” Their guide didn’t like that, clearly, if the sudden stillness of his intimidatingly large frame was a sign to read, but he had no chance to retort with the sudden sharp whistle of the nearest locomotive venting steam cutting them both into an uneasy silence.

“Well, you know who we are,” said Sakura, even as she finished the last few bites of her _onigiri_. “But who are you? Are you one of the Empress’ guards?” The smile she gave then was guileless, friendly in the way Sakura had a particular gift for, but Fai had seen her turn that same smile on merchants and bandits both and somehow come away the victor, every single time. “Do you have a title I should call you, or maybe a name?”

There was a long pause, the kind of silence that suggested their new companion was re-evaluating every assumption he’d formed of the young woman smiling cheerfully up at him with a few flecks of rice stuck to the corner of her mouth; the kind of silence Fai revelled in, when all was said and done, because it meant that Sakura had, once again, knocked the feet out from under whichever fool thought to underestimate her today.

“Kurogane,” came that voice, low and rough and not a little unsure; dark eyes were wary even as they flicked to Sakura and Fai and back again. “I serve the _Tsukuyomu_.” An archaic title, that — one Fai had glanced across in the handful of books he’d studied as they ventured forth on the long trip to Nihon’s isles, wave-tossed and queasy from many weeks at stormy sea. _Moon-reader_ , it meant: another name for a seer, for one blessed by the moon’s own godmark. One who saw the future in dreams. “I have no title worth remembering.” Something unsaid there, in that last murmur —but something Fai did not have time to linger on, not with Sakura clapping her hands together firmly and stepping forward.

“Well met, Kurogane,” she said brightly, dropping into a short bow. “Thank you for coming to guide us to Suwa. Even if you don’t want to be here, I still appreciate it.”

Another pause, this one startled and — if the barest, _faintest_ stripe of pink above the dark of that cloth mask was anything to go by — not a little embarrassed. “Well met,” said Kurogane, after the moment dragged on awkwardly, and if he sounded more confused than annoyed, well, that was best for all of them. Besides, two days travel with Sakura for company would only serve to rattle him further, shake him out of whatever mould the Imperial Guard had pressed him into. Fai himself had felt his whole world uproot itself after barely an hour and a healing cantrip: a trip to Suwa province with Sakura would make this Kurogane a new man by the time they arrived.

“Our train will be the next one leaving,” said Fai firmly, and caught Sakura’s nod and a sharp look from their new companion besides. “Sakura and I have only what we carry with us,” and this with a nudge of his foot to the battered soldiers pack at his feet, “—have you your ticket and luggage organised?”

Kurogane shook his head, tapping the coarse fingers of one hand against the brassy badge at his breast. “Don’t need a ticket, and I travel light. Everything I need I have on me.” A little arrogant, perhaps, to assume there was nothing he might need, but if arrogance was Kurogane’s only flaw —besides his prickly manner at least — then it was one most likely backed by some degree of competence. Either that, or it was the foolishness of youth that left him calm at the prospect of death. Because he _was_ young, and Fai knew that much without needing to see his face entire: young and arrogant and no doubt terrifyingly skilled, to achieve so high an esteem in the Empress’ court.

“Alright then,” said Sakura. “Let’s go — it’s a long trip, and it will be better if we get settled in our compartment before we leave.”

Without prompting, Kurogane fell into step as Sakura took the lead, Fai close enough by her side he could reach out quickly should Sakura find herself endangered, and their new companion a sullen shadow following along behind. It was clear he wasn’t particularly pleased to be on what, to him, was likely a fool’s errand — but he made no audible protest, or attempt to slow them down besides. Ill-manners aside, his sense of duty was like to bind him to his assigned mission without much more than a little grumbling, and _that_ was something Fai could work with.

* * *

Their cabin was small but well-appointed, with a table and two fold-down beds, and even a tiny ensuite with sink and water-closet attached — which was considerably more than Fai had expected, seeing as the tickets they had purchased had been for a shared sleeper-cabin with bunks and no privacy whatsoever. To be suddenly ushered into the front-most of the carriages with plush carpeting and polished wooden panelling was something else entirely. Something Kurogane had achieved with a long, slow stare directed at the conductor alone, and never mind the badge gleaming brassily at his breast.

Once they’d settled in — and once Sakura had satisfied her urge to _ooh_ and _aah_ as their steam-train pulled out during the long, slow departure from the station, hissing clouds of vapour and smoke billowing in their wake as she damn near toppled out the open window she’d leant out of in her excitement —Fai collapsed back into his seat, leather squeaking beneath his sudden weight, and watched as surreptitiously as possible as the man across from him settled into a mirroring position. For a moment, Fai tracked the fall of black eyes across his face in a locked gaze; a moment quickly broken as Sakura slipped backwards off the table and sprung to her feet, stretching out her arms with a yawning groan.

“Ah, but it’s good to be moving again. And so fast too — travelling by locomotive is almost as quick as by airship!”

“You _were_ fond of the dirigibles in Autozam,” said Fai mildly, leaning back as Sakura took her seat — the lone wooden chair tucked beneath the lip of the table beneath the window. She pulled it out to the middle of their very small room, rocking atop it as she sank down onto the cushion and bunched up her travelling robes over her trews a little to better stretch her legs out across the tiny patch of richly embroidered carpet.

“Of course! To drift above the clouds like that… who wouldn’t love it?” grinned Sakura. Her expression mellowed a little, something wistful in the curve of her mouth as she looked back towards the window and the countryside flitting past in a green blur. “I like this too. We don’t have steam-trains back home in Clow, so to travel like this is pretty amazing. Your country is beautiful,” she added then, turning back to Kurogane as she spoke. “I’ve never seen such lush greenery, even this close to a city. For someone like me, who grew up in a desert… it’s _wonderful_.”

The look on Kurogane’s face then — at least, what little Fai could see of it, with how the mask clung to the rise of his cheekbones and covered his mouth entirely — was the closest Fai had seen to anything like _pleased_ since they’d met the man. “Nihon has many forests. This is nothing —we’ll be travelling deeper into the mountains in the next few hours, into real dense woodland where the sunlight can’t break the canopy.” Kurogane leant back a little, relaxing into a more natural pose. One hand skimmed the air in front of him, and the masked face that had been stony from the moment Fai had first seen it softened with eagerness. “It took _years_ to carve the way through the forested peaks, and the train line doesn’t hit grassland again until it reaches the valleys of Kashihara—”

Breaking himself off with a cough, Kurogane turned aside, stiffening even as Sakura beamed at him, her delighted laughter raising a flush across the stern expression Kurogane forced. “As I was saying. There is plenty of forest yet to come — don’t exhaust yourself before night falls.”

“I won’t,” said Sakura brightly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

Fai had, somewhat naively, assumed it would only take two days of Sakura’s company to crack Kurogane’s prickly outer shell. He was wrong: it took an hour, more or less. A little less, Fai noted with bemused pride, than it had taken her to crack him, and that was without liberal application of life-saving magic.

Kurogane was silent for the rest of the morning, looking out the windows and stubbornly resisting any further attempts to draw him into conversation with stiff-shouldered silence. After tiring of attempting all sorts of questions about his role serving the Empress, Sakura eventually retired to her travel journal and the sketches she’d left half-finished the night before in their haste to pack. Fai watched with idle pride as Sakura polished up the fine details of a sketch of the Palace itself, focusing on the sweeping arc of the rooves and the vermillion-painted gates that lead to the supplicant’s entrances. Her sketches were in grey-scale and charcoal, but as the shapes took clear definition beneath her busy fingers, it was easy to see where one might splash colour for effect.

“ _There_. With luck, Mistress Yuuko will accept my travel log into the archives — I’m the first journeyman to leave the greater continent in almost thirty years, not to mention the first ever to make it beyond the eastern isles.” Sakura dragged the back of her hand across one cheek, careless of the dark smudge left by the trail of her thumb and forefinger. “I’ll have my mastery when this is done, Fai, I promise you that.”

Fai chuckled. “Of that there is no doubt in my mind, Miss Sakura.” No mere platitude, either — in the months he had known her, Sakura had proven herself far beyond the level of a journeyman in demeanour, talent and applied skill. Why, if Sakura had not found him that fateful night in Chizeta… _well_. Fai would not be around to appreciate anything, let alone Sakura’s growth as a healer. “When you succeed upon this quest, I daresay your Academy will welcome you home with open arms and empty textbooks.”

Sakura giggled, scrubbing at the bridge of her nose as she flushed pink. “More like empty garden beds. I need those herbs more than anything else: leaf or stalk or seed, it doesn’t matter which. If I can bring home some small speck of living plant, we can coax it to bloom in the greenhouses, no matter how dry or dead it might seem.” She looked up at Kurogane, then, and without seeing her face Fai already knew the gleam in her eye: green and bright and glowing with a determination unmatched. “Everything I’ve done, every league I’ve travelled, it’s all for this: the fabled medicinal grasses of Suwa. There’s so many lives we can change, so many things we can learn. And I _will_ bring this hope home to Clow, no matter what stands in my way.”

For a long moment, Kurogane was still — no movement in breath or body, still enough that a knot of unease cramped in Fai’s stomach. It was one thing to see another’s passion poured out before you, and another entirely to work to aid it with no hope of reward, especially when your involvement had been commanded rather than volunteered. If Kurogane dismissed her, if he belittled her even in the _slightest_ — this girl, this young woman with stars in her eyes and the hope of her country in green-thumbed hands, this journeyman healer that had staunched his wounds and dragged him out of the gutters — then Fai did not even know what he would do.

When Kurogane spoke it was in a voice low and gravelled, his expression masked and those black eyes unreadable. “It is not my quest, but it is a noble one, and I am sworn to your aid — and by those oaths I will help you.” Something darker then, in his eyes and in his bearing, a melancholy that shadowed each word. “But do not place all your hope in this. The herbs of Suwa are no panacea — only medicine. Good medicine, but no cure for plague alone, no miracle grown in grass or leaf. Without the skill to apply it, without the magic needed to render and refine it, the plants you seek might as well be weeds.”

Sakura smiled, saying nothing, and as Fai watched the frown crease Kurogane’s brow at her silence, he knew what she was after next. It was barely a stretch to reach down under his seat and for Sakura’s satchel stowed beneath; even less effort to toss it to her across the carpeting so the worn leather pack slid to rest at her feet. “In Nihon, you have godmarks — blessings in your blood from the Gods that founded your country when the world was still new.” Sakura hefted her satchel up into her lap, scuffed pockets bulging with the minutiae of an apothecaries’ craft and the many small trinkets collected in over a year of travelling. “In Autozam, there are many among their people who can manipulate metal with touch and thought.”

“Ferrokinesis,” supplied Fai, leaning back into his seat as dark eyes widened. “Many of the master craftsmen who work in the mechanical and engineering districts have this ability, alongside those who work with magic. Another skill unique to the people of one country, and only found in those born there.”

“Exactly,” said Sakura, unbuckling the biggest opening of her satchel, reaching into the jumble of contents. “In Hua Ren, they say every person is born with a red thread tied to the smallest finger of the left hand that only they can see — following that thread leads you to your destined one.” She pulled out a small bag, battered canvas dyed to a dark green and creased by many hours of travel, and laid it on the polished wood of the small table top, swaying a little with the motion of the train as she stood. “In Cephiro they can sing to crystals, to the very stones of the earth, and with those songs give rise to spires and towers beyond the skill of human hands. Every place in this world, and every people, have their own unique abilities.”

Sakura smiled as she loosened drawstrings and unrolled it, heavy canvas crumpling open between her hands to reveal the tiny pouches stitched into the fabric, each and every one filled with twigs and seeds and dried leaves, preserved flowers and sprigs of dried greenery, all precisely arranged according to category and origin. “Clow never used to be a desert. Thousands of years ago, there were great deltas of wetlands and lakes, grasslands and forests like the ones you described.” She looked up at Kurogane, carefully lifting a small cutting from its assigned place and holding it carefully between her fingertips. “There was a great drought, one we know happened from fossils and sedimentary remains that our archaeologists have dug out from beneath the dunes. The culture that lived there died, and most of the plant life too; it took _centuries_ before the land was liveable again. But when new people finally settled in the land that would become Clow, they were born with new gifts too.”

Between her fingertips, the dried cutting _wriggled_ , bursting into movement like something alive. A sharp breath was all that escaped Kurogane before the small sprig in Sakura’s fingers bloomed into growth, thin tendrils curling in tender green threads around her hand and winding around her wrist as delicate new leaves fountained forth. A flower, unfurling slowly, blossomed as she opened her palm — soft pink petals and a sweet perfume drifting between her fingers. Carefully, she held it out towards Kurogane, and as though moved by some force beyond himself, Kurogane reached back in return, taking the flower Sakura placed gently in his hand.

“You see?” said Fai. “If anyone can bring home these legendary herbs, it will be Sakura.” And if Fai could not keep the pride from his voice, well. Sakura deserved all the pride he could give.

Kurogane looked up slowly, turning the flower over in his hands. “No wonder the _Tsukuyomu_ granted your request.” In his hold the plant had already begun to wilt, green vines browning and brittle as they crumbled under his touch, and it wasn’t long before the last shreds had fluttered slowly to the carpet. “I cannot promise you will find what you need in Suwa. It has been many years since the province was closed. But if I can aid you, I will.”

Sakura smiled. “Thank you. That’s all I can ask.”

* * *

In the dark hours of the morning, Fai stirred from his snowfield dreams to the sense of unknown magic — and the face of a stranger in the dark.

Without startling, without moving, without doing anything more than staring from his bunk with his head still upon his pillow, Fai forced his eyes to focus on the scene before him: the tall figure at the window, the heavy shadows barely tempered by the small light seeping beneath their cabin door, the pale slip of paper with dark symbols inked upon its surface and a splotch of what a lifetime of magical practice insisted was blood marked at the seal’s edge. _A paper talisman,_ came the thought — a blessing-strip, a ward against evil, much like the ones Nihon’s many priests and priestesses adorned their temples with. But this piece of paper was folded quickly in skilled hands into the shape of a bird and, with the soft creak of the window and a sudden whip of wind from the night passing outside, thrown into the darkness to soar free.

Immediately Fai’s sense of that strange magic faded into nothing, just as quickly as the window was closed. In the bed across the room Sakura stirred at the sudden cold gust but not enough to wake, dreaming on unaware as the man at the window stood and turned back to the cabin proper. Right into the line of Fai’s sight, no less, and suddenly he was no longer a stranger.

Kurogane, of course it was Kurogane — who else could it be? — but unmasked as Fai had not seen him before, face bare to the world and his cloth mask crumpled and clinging in a snood around his neck, tangled with the strands of long hair that spilled from where it was bound. Dark eyes, darker still beneath night’s own cloak, drifted to Fai’s face; no doubt he was staring, and obviously so, but it wasn’t something that could be helped. Because Kurogane was _beautiful_ , even half-glimpsed in a shadow: his face as fierce and solemn as any carving made by any God, and by all the saints and stars, Fai could not think why he would hide that face behind a mask.

“I sent word ahead,” said Kurogane simply, in the kind of voice that carried soft and low in the dark. “There will be horses waiting for us when we arrive.” It was more explanation than Fai had thought to ask for, sleep-muddled and sensitised to the sudden shiver of strange magic that had rippled over his skin and pulled him into wakefulness.

“Thank you,” said Fai thickly, straightening a little in an attempt to sit upright. One stockinged foot found its way from beneath the covers, stretching to reach the floor.

“Don’t get up. Dawn is a few hours yet.” Kurogane crossed the room in two quick strides, moving smoothly with the rocking of the train like a sailor on his sea legs. He reached the side of Fai’s bunk and Fai — Fai’s heart shuddered through the embarrassing thought that Kurogane had been making for _his_ bed, but no, that dark figure looming over him was only so that Kurogane could relax back into his warrior’s pose by the door, sinking into a kneel with a single fluid motion borne of long practice. It was, in fact, exactly the same meditative pose he’d taken when Fai himself had retired some hours ago, except now his eyes were on Fai’s face whereas before they had been closed in some attempt at rest.

As Kurogane settled, he reached for his mask once more, flicking the tail of his hair back over his shoulder and making as though to smooth dark fabric back over his face; without knowing why Fai jerked upright in one helpless movement, covers crumpling in a downward rush.

“Don’t,” he blurted, with a note of urgency too loud and too fervent for such a silent moment in the middle of the night. Kurogane froze with fingers curled in soft, dark cloth. “You need not—” Fai stuttered, stumbling over the words with a thick tongue. “I don’t pretend to understand why you wear it, only if you wish to leave it off, there would be no questions from Sakura or myself.”

Black eyes were unreadable, unfathomable; shadows beneath shadows, with only the whites of Kurogane’s eyes visible in the sliver of light from beneath the door’s edge.

“You know nothing of me,” murmured Kurogane, after a long moment that sung with tense regret. “You come to our country and you see them on our skin; with just one look you think you understand what they mean — what it is to bear the blood of a God.” He sighed, a deep slow breath that stirred the still air. “The girl — she spoke of _blessings_. The metal-shapers in Autozam, the thread that binds in Hua Ren. Crystals in Cephiro.” The foreign words were heavy, spat out with vehemence. “You said nothing of the blessings of _Valeria_.”

That one word slid between Fai’s ribs, dagger-sharp and twisting, cutting into an ache that time had only dulled. A low blow, perhaps, but one struck in defence of a wound, and Fai could not fault it even as it stung.

“Not all godmarks are meant to be seen.” Kurogane’s voice was soft, but the anger — _oh_ , that anger was hard and brittle and jagged at its edges, ready to cut with only the slightest of pressure. “Mine more so than most. Do not ask me again.”

“I understand,” said Fai, in lieu of apology. Kurogane did not want an apology; Fai could see that much. Kurogane wanted to be someplace else, where a strange man had not asked him to bare his soul without a thought for what that meant. But he had been ordered here, in service to his Empress; had even found some degree of empathy in himself for the quest of a young woman from a land he had never heard of—

A chill crept up Fai’s spine. If Kurogane had never heard of Clow, then how had he known of _Valeria_? Had word of Valeria’s destruction spread so far, even across the sea of storms? But even if Kurogane had known of a land long dead, how had he known Fai as anything more than the mage-knight of Ceres Fai had become?

“You forget,” said Kurogane dully, and it was almost like a slap, hearing that voice with all the emotion bled from it. “I serve the _Tsukuyomu_ — the one who reads the moon. She predicted your coming, and I knew of you long before you set foot on Nihon’s soil.” Black eyes closed wearily, and Fai watched that perfect mouth move with a frightening sense of disassociation. “A mage-knight, taken in by neighbouring Ceres; the last survivor from a country now dead, every castle a frozen tomb. No oaths, no vows, and yet you serve a stranger: the desert-born girl who saved you from the wound you earned in Chizeta.”

Fai’s hand slipped to his hip, to the scars that had only faded after weeks of Sakura’s handmade unguents applied day and night. He’d been careless, _drunk_ and careless, let his guard down so far from home he’d been nothing but a fool. A soft target in a den of thieves, easy pickings with a fat purse waiting to be plucked. It was only luck he’d been left to bleed from the wound in his back and not given a slit throat as a parting gift; only luck that had seen him fall into the same gutter she would pass hours later, luck that let him look up and meet eyes that had been so sad and so very green.

“Besides,” and now Kurogane sounded tired more than anything else. “Of course you are Valerian — _of course_ you are. What else in the world could you be, with eyes _that_ shade of blue?”

Blue eyes, or rather, the unnaturally and vividly blue eyes such as those Fai unfortunately possessed, had been the mark of Valerian blood for centuries — the mark of Valerian _royal_ blood specifically, the same royal blood that had cost Fai the only family he’d ever known, and at the same time given him the gift the King himself had been known for, the gift of thousands of years of Valerian ancestry, a bloodline worn so thin and twisted it could only ever result in war as scion fell upon scion like feral dogs to tear each other apart. But no one had noticed when the youngest of the cluster of royal bastards had fled the palace — or if they had, they’d most likely assumed the long winter itself would kill him as he made for the mountains and the ever-falling snow.

(It nearly had, but for the fortune of stumbling onto a travelling encampment; it nearly had, but for the gentle concern of a journeying sorcerer, with a smile as kind as it was tired and the kind of heart that could not leave a young boy to his death in the uncaring cold.)

“Go back to sleep,” said Kurogane then, and for a moment the exhaustion in his face was naked in the dark. “I will help you for the sake of the girl — but do not ask anything else of me. We are strangers, and that is all.”

Fai said nothing, because truly, what else could have been said? How could you tell a man you were more than what the Gods made you, more than what your past had given you, when it was clear he would not believe it, not even of himself? But somewhere between lying back into his bunk and pondering that dark stare, sleep swept up and claimed him; it was well past dawn when again Fai opened his eyes, and this time his waking spurred from the slow creak of steel wheels grinding to a stop, the motion of the train rocking to a shuddering halt as it pulled into station.

“Fai! Wake up sleepy-head, we’re here!” Sakura’s voice was several shades of chipper, far too cheerful for a man who’d slept uneasy for most of the night to bear, and Fai groaned under his breath as he sat up, sleep-rumpled and sore-headed with the morning light pricking at squinting eyes.

“Sakura, please,” he mumbled, and nearly cracked his forehead against Sakura’s own as she leaned in close in her excitement.

“Kurogane left already — he said something about horses? But the train will leave again for the next station soon, so we’ve got to hurry. Come on, grab your coat.” Sakura flung said coat at him as soon as Fai swung his feet off the bunk, smacking him in the face with a bundle of cloth. “I want to get breakfast too before we get moving — I’m sure there’s somewhere in town we can pick up supplies before we ride for Suwa.”

Struggling into his coat, Fai stumbled through stepping into his boots and slinging himself into his old soldier’s pack — none of which was made any easier by Sakura’s enthusiastic chattering, or the sleep-grit making his eyes itch with tiredness — and managed to gather enough wits about himself to find his way out the door without banging his head on the lintel or tripping over the laces of his boots. Sakura’s spirits were still high even as they left the carriage and its passengers, stepping out into the cool morning air as the locomotive puffed steam beside the platform, the sparkle of obvious excitement in her eye _nearly_ enough to make Fai smile in return.

“Oh! There’s Kurogane!” And there he was indeed, beneath the fall of Sakura’s pointing finger: standing under the eaves of the station stable, tall and stern and masked once more, long dark hair a cascade over broad shoulders from the high knot he’d pulled it into. Even as Fai watched, Kurogane looked up, black eyes narrowing in the distance. Sakura, apparently oblivious to the sheer dislike Fai could feel radiating from their escort, waved cheerfully — and to Fai’s utter astonishment, earnt herself a nod in acknowledgement. “C’mon — I want to get moving, and Kurogane is waiting for us!”

“I thought you wanted breakfast,” protested Fai, somewhat weakly, but Sakura was already leaping down the creaking wooden steps, and there was no choice but to follow as she wove her way through the crowd gathering along the platform.

“Took you long enough,” said Kurogane in lieu of greeting, his scowl pronounced even beneath the mask — but dark eyes warmed almost imperceptibly as the stable doors swung open, and an elderly ostler with reins in her thick-knuckled hands and a dark-feathered hawk branded upon her wiry forearm emerged from its depths with two horses trotting obediently behind.

“Your horses, Milord.” Fai had heard creaking hinges sound smoother than the crack of her voice, but there was a note of pride there nonetheless, pride for the magnificent creatures snorting and huffing great breaths that steamed in the cool morning air. “It is good to see you home once more.”

 _Milord?_ thought Fai, and then more urgently _Home?_ even as Kurogane shook his head, pressing into one withered hand a small purse of clinking coin. “For the horses, Grandmother. We will return them hence.” He took the reins with a steady grip, and the horses — stamping chargers, both of them, and bred to be over several generations of careful horse-husbandry — gentled under the touch of his hand, the belts and buckles swinging from their saddlebags clinking gently as they moved. “You can ride?”

Fai started, unprepared for the sudden focus of that dark gaze. “Well enough — it’s been a few years, but you never forget.”

“I’ve ridden camels,” volunteered Sakura happily, stepping forward and offering her hand to the darker of the two horses, giggling as it lipped at her palm with a velvety muzzle. “Oh, but you are _beautiful_. I would be honoured to ride you, if you’d let me.”

Peripherally aware of Kurogane’s raised eyebrows at Sakura’s loving talk to her new horse friend, Fai took the moment to bow. “Thank you, Grandmother — your assistance is greatly appreciated.”

The old woman snorted, almost laughing as she waved a wrinkled hand in dismissal; the hawk on her arm looked on disdainfully, ruffling its feathers. “I’m not doing this for your thanks, boy. A vow is a vow, even after death.” Her eyes were hard and undulled by age, sharp on Fai’s face as she peered up at him. “You take care of my horses, now — and the Young Lord, too. Gods alone know what danger you’ll face beyond the barrier.”

“We should leave now,” said Kurogane bluntly, turning the conversation aside. “We have not the time to linger. The ride to the border will take the better part of the day, and to be out unprepared after sundown is asking for trouble to find us.” Sakura squeaked as without warning two large hands circled her waist and Kurogane lifted her up upon the larger of the two horses with no apparent effort, her feet swinging behind the stirrups. “You take the girl, and follow my lead.” Fai caught the reins as they were tossed in his direction, snatching them out of the air.

Kurogane stalked past, his coat snapping as he swung himself up onto the second charger with the grace of one well-practiced. “Hurry up. The sooner I get you there, the sooner we return.”

“One would think you were in a hurry,” muttered Fai, but did as he was bid anyway; Sakura laughed and stroked their horse delightedly as Fai stepped up and into the saddle behind her, their horse snorting beneath his added weight. “Lead the way,” was what he said louder, however, and even if Kurogane had heard him before, he did not care. Saints knew the man had a foul enough temper; it didn’t matter how amiable Fai aimed to be when every friendly overture was met by dark eyes stony and that face stern beneath the mask.

“Gods speed you,” called the ostler, raising one hand in what could have been prayer as they rode out from the stable proper. “Do not tarry beyond the barrier after nightfall!” If there was a warning there it was one ignored — Kurogane glanced over his shoulder not once, and all Fai could see when he looked back in turn was the old woman standing still before the stable doors, and the great clouds of steam coming from the train as it pulled from the station.

* * *

The sun was high by the time Kurogane called them to stop for rest, and even then that was mostly so he could water the horses by a burbling stream. Fai could hear him murmuring soft nothings as he rubbed both steeds down and adjusted their saddles, leaving himself and Sakura both to watch beneath the shade of a large tree — one of many large trees, in fact, as the edge of the forest loomed beyond the grassy fields of farmland gone to seed. Here and there, they had passed the remnants of villages as they travelled: old buildings of rotten wood and structures half-decayed, reclaimed by the greenery growing up around the broken fences and cracked stone walls.

(They had not seen any people at all.)

Breakfast had been eaten on horseback, Sakura delighting to find preserved sweetfruit and pressed rice balls among the supplies that had been packed for them; evidently, Kurogane had not merely asked for horses with his message sent flying into the night, but enough provisions to last them all a few days at least if carefully rationed. Dried strips of meat were all they had for lunch though — there had been no mention of starting a fire for soup to soften them, and that disappointing decision saw Fai gnawing half-heartedly on something that tasted more of fish than venison.

“We’ll let the horses graze a little,” said Kurogane as he came back from the banks of the stream. “An hour or so to rest before we move on. At this rate, we should reach the outskirts before sundown.”

Sakura, finishing off the last scraps of her dried jerky, perked up visibly at that announcement. “Really? Do you think we’ll have time to look for any plants tonight?”

“No.” The retort was clipped, as closed-off as Kurogane’s face as he took a seat upon an upturned log and took a long drag from one of the waterskins he’d filled at the riverbank. “Too dangerous. Besides, everything looks the same after nightfall — I’d rather not going digging for weeds in the dark. Better to camp outside the barrier for the night, and journey inwards come morning.”

Chewing slowly, Fai swallowed —but before he could voice his own suspicions, Sakura spoke. “The lady with the horses mentioned a barrier also. Are we approaching a fence? Is Suwa walled off?”

 _No wall of wood or stone_ , thought Fai, and if he had not been watching so closely, would surely have missed the flicker of hesitation in dark eyes as Kurogane looked away. A land left cursed, and a barrier beyond which was danger; a young lord returning home to a fiefdom left behind, a young lord who had shown the magic in his blood, even only by the use of a talisman in the night. Kurogane had been the only choice the Empress could have made as their escort for the most obvious reason — he knew Suwa as only one born there would, and if Gods were tied to blood in Nihon, what was not to say that one’s blood could be tied to the land they sprung from?

“In a manner, yes,” said Kurogane, though his gaze was not on Sakura’s face — was turned black and cool upon Fai, no doubt well aware of the conclusions just reached. “It’s hard to explain to outsi— to those unfamiliar with Nihon’s magic.”

“I love to learn about new types of magic!” said Sakura cheerfully, and before Fai could offer that perhaps her questions were better not asked, she was already turning to Kurogane with all manner of curiosity beaming in her smile. “You have magic, don’t you? That’s why you were sent to escort us — because you have the same magic that Suwa does.”

Kurogane stiffened, in much the same way a hound before the hunt would: a certain rigidity of spine, hackles bared for all his mask covered his mouth, black eyes as hot as coals as Fai watched fabric flutter beneath nostrils flared from a heavy breath too sharply drawn.

“Is it a ward, like the ones we felt in the palace? Or like, a _do-no-harm_ spell — where you can’t cross the borders if you have malicious intent? We should be fine with that,” frowned Sakura then, “unless removing samples of plant life can be considered malice… magic doesn’t work in the same way a human mind would, so even what we see as harmless could definitely infringe upon the boundaries of the spell as it was first determined, right Fai?”

“That is correct,” began Fai, somewhat hesitantly, and more than a little distracted at that. It was hard to look away from Kurogane, now that he knew the shape of that face, even if only by moonlight; it was easy, so terribly easy now to see how his lips moved into a frown and the muscle pulling beneath the sharp arc of a pronounced cheekbone, an expression of discomfort in the crease of his brows and the dark of his eyes. “Sakura, perhaps we might discuss this another time—”

“The barrier that confines Suwa is based on the bloodline of the ruling family,” said Kurogane dully, each word muted more by his low mood than the cloth that clung to the shape of his mouth. “It can only be released by those of that blood.” _Confined_ , he said, not protected — a chill prickled Fai’s spine, leaving him too cold beneath warm dappled sunlight as fragments of thoughts collided with a realisation too deep for a calm forest clearing, the smell of grass and horse too real for the dread that tingled in his fingertips. _Confined, and danger beyond the barrier; the young lord returning to his home. Better to travel by daylight, and linger not after dark._

( _There will be no more blood spilt on that cursed soil._ )

“Come. We’re wasting daylight.” The tone of Kurogane’s voice brooked no argument, and the way he stood offered no protest, either, each step almost a lunge as he surged away from their impromptu rest-site in a sudden snap of movement, boots heavy in the long grass that swayed around them and the tail of his hair whipping about. He was across the clearing and astride his horse in the time it took Sakura to scramble upright, and though Fai felt the same sense of urgency, he kept his movements slow and non-threatening. There was an air to Kurogane now, a dangerous one: the heat shimmer of a powder-keg about to blow, the tingle of ozone on the tongue as the oncoming storm turned the clouds electric, the slow rasp of leather glove over lacquer sheath as hand reached for sword.

“I said something to upset him, didn’t I?” Sakura’s face was a picture of pure regret, young and sorrowful and a little bit confused. “I didn’t— I didn’t mean to, I just wanted to—”

“It’s alright,” said Fai gently, and offered a hand to help her up. Sakura’s hand, so small in his own, was shaking. “Sometimes there are wounds we can’t see, and for those kinds of wounds, words alone can be enough to make them sting. Kurogane will not begrudge you something said in ignorance.” It was more hope than surety, that promise, but there was reason enough to give it — in their brief acquaintance, for all that Kurogane had proven himself rude and ill-tempered, a figure of intimidation with sorrows that belied his youth and a streak of compassion that ran deep beneath his dark demeanour, he had not once been cruel.

“Think no more of it,” was all Fai could offer when they were mounted once more, Sakura uneasy in the saddle and her arms tight around his waist. “I assure you, Kurogane himself will not.”

A lie, but one Sakura would never know the truth of even if it was so — and if the man who rode before them with a steady gait and an unflinching forward-face was thinking of whatever Sakura’s words had brought to mind, he gave no sign of it: riding tall with shoulders back and seated straight in the saddle, the afternoon sunlight dappling shadows through the dark tail of his hair.

Perhaps unsurprisingly there was no more talking after that brief interlude, their guide silent and stony as he lead the way, and so too the air of the land around them changed: no more the quiet green peace of ruined homesteads reclaimed by the wilderness, whatever tragedy there had once been was buried softly beneath layers of new growing life; now the forest grew gloomier, thicker, trees twisted even as they spiralled towards a patched and barren canopy, and great dark branches clawed upwards in unwholesome snarls of brackened wood. No birdsong either, and the horses were clearly troubled, letting out snuffling breaths, flicking ears uneasily, and pulling at the reins in simple animal agitation that had not been there before.

“There’s… there’s something wrong with the forest,” murmured Sakura, her cheek heavy against Fai’s back where she leant into him, clinging close in their shared saddle. “It’s like everything here is holding its breath.” The circle of her arms was tight now, and had been for some distance, ever since the day’s warm light had begun to die into evening’s embers.

“Don’t fall behind,” called out Kurogane — the first words he had spoken in hours, and Fai snapped the reins to coax his horse into a trot before the words had a chance to echo. “Stay close now,” he added, when Fai pulled up beside him, and the broken tree-shade that fell over his face in moving patches was nothing to the shadow in his eyes. “We’re close to the border. Not much further before we need to stop for the night.”

On the list of places Fai would like to spend a night, a forest that seemed to be rotting from within was not one — but this was not his quest to lead upon, and the tightening of Sakura’s hands in the fabric of his coat enough to urge him on. “Please say there is a clearing ahead, or some forgotten campsite — I can’t say I’m eager to sleep beneath the trees.”

Kurogane snorted, pulling up short as his horse huffed and stamped, all but ready to rear beneath the hands upon the reins. “The forest will give way soon —we’ll stop then.” Again, his horse stamped, hooves cracking heavy across decaying twigs and leaf-mould, violently enough Kurogane had to yank hard to stay seated. “Easy, easy!” It was too late already — Fai could see the whites of the beast’s eyes, horse-teeth gnashing up a foam, and Sakura cried out behind him as Kurogane leapt from the horse’s back with a curse as it skittered and snapped up into a full rear, preparing to dash.

Kurogane rolled as he landed, crushing through layers of leafy detritus with a crunching crackle, but he was up on his feet again before Fai could blink, reaching for lashing reins to try and gentle the terrified creature. “Hey — _shh_ , hey. Easy. _Easy_ , now.” Fear was a contagion for horses — terror would leap quickly from one beast to the next, but Fai’s own steed was little more than cagey, snorting and tossing a heavy head as Kurogane slowly urged his horse back down to the earth churned beneath stamping hooves. Carefully, Fai ran his hand down his horse’s neck, feeling for straining tendons or a leaping pulse, but his ride at least was stable if not quiet, mostly calm compared to its match even as it huffed unhappily.

“Why? What could have scared them so bad?” asked Sakura, but Fai couldn’t answer. Animal instinct? The leering sense of disquiet that had followed them from the very start of the forest? Whatever it was, it was enough for Kurogane to start unpacking saddlebags, wrapping around himself a belted bandolier to flare across his hips, the tails of his coat flapping as he strapped it into place — and a pair of pistols too, if Fai was not mistaken. A handful of cloth-wrapped packages next, bundled into an unrolled kitbag and slung heavy over one broad shoulder.

Fai frowned. Were they continuing on foot? “I think we should dismount, Sakura. Hold a moment — I’ll help you down.”

“The horses won’t travel further,” said Kurogane, looking up from what was definitely a pistol as Fai lowered Sakura down. The barrel spun open, bullets glinting silver and strange as Kurogane clicked them into place with oddly bell-like _clink_ s of metal.

Sakura froze knee-high in the grass, her eyes brilliant and horrified. “You’re not— you’re not going to _shoot_ _them_?”

Kurogane stared, pistol loose in one hand. Dark eyes blinked slowly, and if he hadn’t been wearing a mask, Fai would have sworn the look on that face was disturbed. “ _No_ ,” he said bluntly, ramming the first pistol home into its holster and moving to load the second. “The horses will be fine — they know the way back to the station better than I do. I should have known better than to have brought them so close to the barrier…”

“How far away are we?” asked Fai, watching as Kurogane slid his second pistol home with the ease of a man well-practiced. Ceres had no use for gun-based weaponry, not with weather magic such a well-polished tool in their armoury, and Nihon itself had a reputation for legendary swordsmen; to see someone so clearly competent with as new a weapon as a firearm was something else entirely.

“Too close. It’s been a while — I thought we had further to go than this.” The distracted mutter was definitely not meant to imply as much as it did, but Fai said nothing; the crease between dark brows had canyoned with the kind of worry that could kill a man if left unchecked. “Maybe an hour on foot,” clarified Kurogane, looking up at last and unbuttoning his coat — for ease of access, obviously, and not to show the breadth of his chest beneath the crisp uniform shirt of the Imperial Guard. “Sakura — it’s not safe. You need to stay close to me.”

If Sakura was startled to be addressed so directly, she gave no sign of it; simply stepped forward, one hand tight on the strap of her satchel, and nodded with the understanding of a woman ten years her senior. “I understand.” In the afternoon light, her eyes were more hazel than green, determined chips of amber that glowed with her spirit. Fai laid a hand upon her shoulder and squeezed gently.

 _If I had but a scrap of your courage, I would be the bravest man I know._ He caught Kurogane’s eye then, and did not flinch beneath the flicker of black that burned with some furious tension. “And I? Where do you want me?”

Kurogane slapped his horse on the flank, provoking a snort and a final stamp of hooves as it raced back into the forest, Fai’s own steed was not far behind in chasing its lead. “You,” said Kurogane, and turned full to face him, shoulders taut and scowl thunderous beneath the clinging cloth of his mask, “I need _you_ in the rear.”

The urge to salute was _almost_ as strong as the urge to quip back saucily, but then Fai had spent too many years as a soldier to not understand when exactly was a very good time to keep his mouth firmly shut. An ill-timed remark now, no matter how tempting, was like to get him shot. “I’m to guard, you to lead, Sakura safe in between?” Tactics, Fai could do _tactics_ , no matter the terrible bubbling urge to laugh in the face of the pre-battle nerves simmering in his gut. Surviving things was easy — it was the waiting to walk across the killing ground that was the hard part.

Kurogane grunted, too tense to speak; his coat snapped as he turned, and that was all the warning they were apparently to get. Sakura raced to catch up as long legs ate away the forest before them, leaving Fai to scramble into his position as rear guard. Some great danger was weighing on Kurogane’s mind, that much was clear. While Fai was a stranger to this land, he could feel the tension singing in the air: a static that prickled the skin and left each breath stinging in one’s lungs, the same charge lightning called before the strike.

The silence of their march did not help to ease it any, not with only the crack-crunch of leaves and twigs underfoot and the soft huffing of Sakura’s breath as she pushed to keep up with a longer stride than her own. Sweat had only just begun to break across her forehead when Kurogane’s steps slowed and deliberately so; he did not look back, but Fai knew he had done it for her sake even as he stalked through the shadows that flowed and rippled beneath the patchy canopy above. Without the horses, it was clear they were the only living creatures in the words — each breath felt unnaturally loud, a daring echo in a space that reeked of wary quiet, and Fai was so caught on the prickle of imagined sound at the edge of his hearing, he almost missed the sign to stop entirely.

“Oh…” said Sakura softly, when at last they halted on the forest’s edge, and if it was a sigh there was something terribly sad in it. “The earth… it’s _scorched_.”

And so it was. The forest cut away before them by a scar of burnt ground, rusty with some terrible trauma that had glassed good soil for almost a whole yard, left it brittle and burning in the day’s dying light. Kurogane stood there, on the edge of that scar, a shadow as solemn as the broken trees that arched above. Their branches had been severed sharply by some unearthly force, wood blackened at the edges where it came to the space above that great wounding. Even the undergrowth did not dare to reach across, the grey-green tufts of hardy grass reeling away in drunken waves from unclean earth.

And then Fai saw it, some space inwards and stark in shape and meaning: a sword, struck blade-first and deep into the ground, its scaled hilt blackened and the once-bright steel of its edge corroded into black tarnish — tarnish that shone unnaturally wet beneath fading sunlight, tarnish that oozed with malice that dripped like blood fresh spilt, and the chill that curdled in Fai’s gut at the sight alone was venomous beyond all measure.

_Saints have mercy._

The sudden sharp intake of Sakura’s breath felt like a slap, jarring in the still air. “Is that—”

“You stand on the boundary of Suwa Province,” said Kurogane dully, the words struck with the tone of hammer on lead. “Come in good faith, and be welcome.”

* * *

Kurogane would not turn his back on the barrier. Even as they made makeshift camp in a small copse of trees a little to the east of where they had exited the forest — closer to where the sword had been struck, in direct line of sight of the single blade in solitary vigil — Kurogane had kept himself turned towards that scorched border as though at any moment he expected something dreadful to cross it. Considering the devastation left by what was clearly the magical force of the barrier being set into place to prevent _something_ from escaping beyond that border line, Fai had no doubt whatever it was on the other side of it was something dreadful indeed.

Now Kurogane sat at the roots of a crumbling tree with back pressed to wood and coat flared out in his lap, both hands resting on his belt and wary fingers twitching towards gleaming pistols, and the fall of black eyes was dark and wary as they traced the edge of Suwa’s skyline.

“There’s no stars,” said Sakura, both hands held before their small fire. The warm light flickered specks of umber across her face and hair. “The sky beyond the border… in daylight it was simply cloudy, but now it’s like _smoke_.” Black and thick and choking, she meant, with the strangest underglow beneath its charcoal veil: red ghosts shimmering between folds of rippling density. There had been trees beyond that cracked and blistered line, Fai had seen; lush fields of a likeness to what they had already passed earlier that morning, livelier even than the forest they stood in now, and the shadow of structures once built in the green distance — but no matter how calm the scene had been by daylight, it was swallowed by the night and swept into a darkness impenetrable.

“I understand now — why you said it was dangerous,” she mumbled, curling her hands back in towards herself, and the soft sound of Kurogane laughing set the nape of Fai’s neck to prickling.

“No, you don’t,” said Kurogane, almost kindly. When Fai dared to look over at him, it was to see firelight dancing red in black, black eyes. “You really, _really_ don’t.” He had to be smiling, under the mask; the way his face moved and the crinkling of his eyes as he squeezed them shut was clue enough for that. But if it was a smile, it was a rictus of a thing, bitter and twisted and desperately unhappy. Fai had never met someone whose face could be so honest, even when concealed by a layer of clinging silk — to look at Kurogane was to see his heart on display, in all its terrible glory.

Dinner, such as it was, was eaten in silence. Sakura picked sullenly at her _onigiri_ , clearly unnerved by Kurogane’s earlier rebuttal, and the man himself sat behind the fire, his eyes trained to the barrier before them and shoulders stony in their stiff posture. Fai could hardly bring himself to have much of an appetite in so foreboding an atmosphere, but he tried all the same; there would be danger tomorrow, that much was not in doubt, and if he was going to fight whatever unnamed terrors pressed against Suwa’s barrier, it was best to do it on a full stomach.

“You should sleep,” said Kurogane, sometime after Sakura had given up on her _onigiri_ and moved to eating the last few pieces of preserved peaches. “We’re only making one trip into Suwa, and you’ll need all the sleep you can get if you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

Sakura, caught halfway through a yawn, startled with enough force she nearly tipped off the crumbling log that had been dragged over to act as a fireside seat. “Huh? But I thought I was keeping watch with you two!”

Fai smiled. “We’ll take turns, Sakura. This is your quest — of all of us, we need you on your toes the most. You can’t expect to find a handful of herbs amongst all that greenery if you’re not well-rested.” As kind as the offer was, the air was too tense to let Sakura stay up alone to take her turn at the watch, and judging by the way Kurogane grunted in agreement Fai wasn’t alone in that thought either.

“Don’t argue — sleep.” Kurogane’s voice rang with authority into the quiet night. “You can take first watch?” he added, looking over to Fai as though Sakura were not spluttering a protest by the campfire.

“Easily enough,” said Fai. “I assume you want the dawn shift? Four hours will be enough?”

Kurogane tugged his coat higher around his shoulders, dark folds folding flat across his chest and stomach as he sunk deeper back against his perch in lieu of an answer, and Fai watched dark eyes close slowly as though he could not turn his gaze away.

Sakura protested for maybe a handful of minutes more — Fai honestly couldn’t say he was listening — but after no response eventually laid down with her satchel for a pillow, kicking off her boots and bundling herself up in the wrapping of her travelling cloak with her back turned to the fire. It wasn’t the brightest, but it was warm against the chill of the night, and Fai had to sit straight and tall or else fall victim to the drugging warmth as it washed over him in waves of soft heat. He watched his companions, in an effort to stay awake; the night was too dark beyond their small circle of embered light to do much else. Sakura he knew was asleep almost immediately: the soft, kittenish snores were truth enough of that, and Fai could not blame her. It had been a long day’s ride for someone not used to it, and Fai’s own legs were sore even after years on horseback in the Ceresian army.

Kurogane, however, took longer to succumb to sleep. His face was still, breathing steady, but it was likely more of a meditative repose at first, and not true sleep; no living man would lie so unmoving, and dark eyes stirred not beneath their lids like a dreamer would. The muscle of his arms and shoulders, his posture — it was all too stiff, a tautness near trembling with the strain, and even in the shadowed flicker of firelight, Fai could see the strobing pulse pounding at his temple. Not an easy sleeper then, and that was understandable enough; whatever shadows lay beyond the barrier, Kurogane had seen them first hand, no doubt as little more than a boy at that. No child should live through whatever had destroyed Suwa, and Fai would not be surprised at all if Kurogane would have preferred to die with the rest of the province than to be the sole survivor.

A bitter thought, yes, but the _ache_ that had bled into black eyes when they looked upon that great scarred ruin that stood as the barrier… Fai had seen more life in the eyes of dead men.

Still, whether sleep came easy or not, it still came, and Fai could not mark the hour when it did — between one blink and the next, Kurogane slipped beneath its net, the tension in his shoulders easing fractionally and his head dipping down to the long tangle of dark hair that spilled over one shoulder. The low glow of the fire cast flickering shadows that moved strangely across his face, and his brow was creased as though in pain. As Fai watched, closed eyelids fluttered and the fingers slack in Kurogane’s lap twitched restlessly, and it was with some sorrow Fai realised that Kurogane was caught in a nightmare.

Fai is no stranger to uneasy dreams. He was born in Valeria — dreaming of the dead was his birthright, after all.

But never had he watched a man fight with such fear and fury against that dreaming tide as he did now, Kurogane’s breathing heavy and his forehead damp with sweat that dripped down to glitter in the fringe of his eyelashes. Broad shoulders curled inwards, hunching forward as Kurogane struggled in the depths of some night-borne terror, his open hands spasming and shaking as tremors raced across his body, and the temptation to step forward and wake Kurogane from his dreams with just a touch was _almost_ enough to make Fai move.

To wake him would be to place his hand in the mouth of a tiger. The man before him was wounded in spirit, an injury to the soul that cut deeper than to the bone, and to jolt him suddenly from even such a nightmare would be to risk violence. Fai was a competent warrior, a skilled magician and a knight who had survived through several wars; violence did not frighten him. But there was something in Kurogane, some deep-seated and awful darkness, which very nearly did.

“ _Hnnghh…_ ”

It was a miserable moan, more vulnerable than any sound Fai had heard from Kurogane during the man’s waking moments, and before his eyes the tremor that gripped Kurogane seemed to worsen: a great shuddering wave passing down his spine as his head lolled, and the sudden, violent jerk sideways as Kurogane gasped for breath tugged his bunched clothes tighter around his chest and throat. Fai half-rose from his seat by the fire, almost afraid that Kurogane might strangle himself in the folds of his own coat and the knots of his hair, and then froze as the clinging cloth of Kurogane’s mask slipped in its stubborn hold and slid down the length of his neck in a crumpled rush of tension released from stretched fabric, left to hang uselessly in a snood about his collar. His face was naked, bare beneath sweat and firelight, and Fai noted the snarling twist of Kurogane’s mouth as he grunted and groaned against the demons of his dreams with absent dismay, too horrified by what else was bared to his searching gaze.

There, his _godmark_ — and it could be nothing else, dark and twisted and rising in inky coils around the slope of Kurogane’s throat, stretching over the cut of his jaw and culminating in a delicate, sinister curl beneath the rise of a chiselled cheekbone. In the darkness of a train cabin, seen with sleep-heavy eyes and blurred by the rocking shadows of the locomotion, it would have been nigh impossible to make out clearly; here, beneath firelight and left bare on gleaming skin speckled with night-sweat, it almost seemed to pulse and _writhe_ , each coil lit by the fire’s red heart and glowing black.

_Not all godmarks are meant to be seen._

“Hah—!”

The sound was only a gasp by volume, the strangled noise wrenched from Kurogane’s throat mercifully quiet; everything else about it screamed of pain and loss and a terrible, terrible anger, and the glaze of tears in Kurogane’s eyes overflowed as he panted for breath. Each tear caught the light as it dripped down, shimmering and wet on dusky skin, and the tears that touched the shadow of his mark seemed to melt into it completely. Kurogane curled into himself immediately, folding down so his head touched his knees, and Fai watched in awkward silence as all that desperate hurt was shoved back down deep inside as Kurogane fought for composure, his shoulders trembling. It only took a moment, and then it was done; the man who looked up at him once more was stony-faced and silent, the only hint of his terror the wet streaks that painted his face to dampen the cloth of his mask as he smoothed it back into place.

“You saw nothing,” Kurogane rasped. It was like listening to glass break.

“I… No. I saw nothing.” Fai could apologise for bearing witness to something so intimate, but the words would only be taken as a taunt: there was no room in Kurogane’s gaze for any sympathy Fai had to offer.

“Go to sleep — it’s my turn to watch.”

Fai laid down without more prompting, and turned away; made of his body a curve to match the line the fire’s glow cast against the darkness of the forest around him. As he settled Sakura stirred, murmuring sleepily, and then stilled again; she had not woken, mercy of mercies, and with luck would sleep straight through until the morning. Kurogane was silent, but his gaze was full of words unspoken, pressing as though a hand came to rest upon Fai’s shoulder to push him down, and Fai dared not glance back into the circle of the firelight to see if Kurogane really was watching him.

Against his back the fire was warm, and Fai was as comfortable as he could be, stretched out with the heavy wool of his coat a familiar weight, his old soldier’s pack a makeshift pillow as it had been many times before. He was tired, eyes heavy after a long watch against the night and a longer day besides, but even so it took a long time for sleep to finally come.

* * *

_The first step comes barefoot on snow, and Fai knows he is dreaming: can feel the cool dark shadow of the mountains as it washes over him, the ice burning clean and cold in each drawn breath. As always, he turns, and as always she is there — brown eyes kind and her hands work-roughened and so warm where they close about his own to squeeze tightly. Fai laughs, and it feels so bittersweet — for more years he has known her here in the dream beyond death than he has when she was alive, but still he knows her, and to have this one gift is worth every drop of the bloodline that brought him suffering._

_“Mother.”_

_Elda smiles, the same smile Fai knows is his own, and gently slips her fingers free to sign a greeting._ My son. My dear son.

_Carefully, and with ice crunching between his toes, Fai steps forward; wraps his arms around her and buries his face in the spill of her pale hair. Elda’s arms are thin but strong, and her hands run down his back gently as Fai pulls her close. In life, Fai was a child the last time he held her — he could only ever reach her waist to hug her, but it has been thirty years since Elda’s death, and now he is a man grown._

_Her hands squeeze his shoulders, and Fai moves back, Elda’s fingers flying quickly in the space that opens between them._ You are someplace strange — some place that has been scarred down to the spirit. I feel it on you. _She frowns, then, her beautiful kind face heavy with sorrow._ There is pain. So much pain.

_“The land of Suwa,” says Fai heavily, and the words roll like stones from his tongue. “I do not know the details, but many died. We are here for Sakura — she seeks the healing plants that once grew here.”_

_Elda smiles again, the finest and most delicate lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes. Fai is older now than ever she had the chance to be, and the youth of her face is timeless in death._ Your daughter _, she signs, as she always does at Sakura’s name, and in spite of himself, Fai smiles back._ She is a good child, but this quest is dangerous. You must keep her safe. _Elda’s eyes darken, her mouth drawing thin and sad._ There is another... a man? Yes. You must keep him safe too.

_It’s on the tip of Fai’s tongue to protest — Kurogane is not a man who needs to be protected — but Elda’s hands squeeze his shoulders, and the serious cast to her features will not be argued with. “Mother? What is wrong?”_

_Again her hands squeeze his shoulders, and this time the pressure is to turn him, to make him face away; Fai turns, and as he does he sees what he could not before — how the snowfield of his death-dreaming has changed as never it has before, the carpet of white snow bleeding into dark and ill-churned earth, hot and burning shadows flickering in the faraway distance and the blackened skeleton of a foreign castle burning in its ruin._

_“How…?” Never in all his life, never in all his years of dreaming death, has Fai ever seen anything like this. “Mother, how could this—”_

_Elda takes his hand, traces signs across his palm with rough fingertips as his gaze eats upon the dark world that has collided with his dream, and the warmth of her touch is nothing to the chill that twists in Fai’s gut._ Death and dream are connected — you know this. All children of Valeria know this. Someone here dreamed as they died, and they have been waiting. No one in this land could dream for them, but now you are here.

_Kurogane, is the first thought that comes to mind; but he is alive and furious with it, so it cannot be him. It must be another, one of the many thousands of poor souls that surely perished when Suwa fell. But what can Fai do for the dead? Fai can barely take care of the living, and he is no master of this skill — merely the lone survivor of a kingdom fallen, a bearer of a gift he cannot control with the same finesse as his magic._

_Elda squeezes his fingers, signing faster with fingertips that were always rough and blistered from her work in the scullery._ There is someone here who needs you. You must help them.

_Fai turns back a little, enough to see the snow where it meets dark scorched earth; enough to see his mother both and the ruin that burns beyond them. “Was I drawn here to do this? Or was it luck that I came to Nihon across the sea?”_

_Elda’s smile has no answer, but her eyes are loving and her hands are warm._ I do not know. I only know that the man that is my son will not leave someone to suffer so. _She steps forward, her heavy skirts swirling, and raises herself up just enough to press her lips to Fai’s forehead in a kiss. For a long, soft moment Fai is a child again, curled in his mother’s arms in their small room by the kitchens, huddling warm beneath their blankets as the winter blizzards rage beyond the castle walls._ Go. Do what you must. I will still be here when next you dream for me.

_There’s no arguing with her. There never was, when Elda was alive — Fai’s last memory of his mother is of her determined face as she bundled him up tight in layers of furs and pushed him down an old rubbish chute, firelight flickering behind her as the torches of the mobs storming the castle broke through into the servant’s quarters, shouting all the while. Fai had survived the sack of the castle from Elda’s quick thinking alone, and never had he doubted the love by which she had died to save him._

_“I love you,” says Fai, simply. Because he does. Because he never said it enough before she died, and if this dream beyond death can give him the chance to say it all the more in spite of her passing, then he would be a fool not to take it._

_Elda’s eyes are soft and her hands strong where they squeeze around his own one last time._ My son, my darling son. Go now _—_ there is not much time before you wake.

_Fai doesn’t look back. Fai turns, and Fai runs, and Fai feels the snow give way to scorched earth beneath bare feet, the heat of flames only just died licking against his soles as the distance melts away beneath his pounding footsteps. The air is smoky now, the fresh taste of winter chased from his lungs by ash and the bitter flavour of blood burnt on hot metal, the horizon bleeding black and red and umber in roiling thunderheads, the darkling sky above him sparking with sizzling flecks of light._

_The ghost of screaming hangs in the air like clinging mist, a sound beyond hearing that pricks across the skin and vibrates through flesh. Strange shapes rise out of the gloom like cages of broken rib-bones exploding up from beneath the cursed soil: the blackened wreckage of buildings long since charred to smouldering wreckage, the remains of the village that surrounded the castle Fai can see rising from the shadow of a cracked and dried out riverbed. The heart of Suwa, and in its broken shade, there stands a figure — a woman, the long fall of her hair as black as the ashes of her burning home, and her eyes as red as the blood that soaks the pale silk of her kimono._

“I never dreamed that my prayers would be answered,” _says the woman, and each word eats into Fai’s soul like embers burning in the palm of his hand._ “But here you are. Gods bless you and keep you, Fai Fluorite of Ceres.”

_The Lady of Suwa — for she could be no-one else, even in death — stands unbent and unbowed in the ruins of her home, the blood at her breast as fresh and as wet as it was the moment she died. She lifts her chin, her beautiful features solemn, and the tangle of her hair and the tear-marks tracked damp and aching down the flecks of gore that paint her face detract nothing from her regal mien. “My lady,” says Fai as his footsteps slow, and then stops in word and movement both. What can he say? What can he do? Why is he here, in the moment Suwa died, to look upon Kurogane’s mother as she lingers beyond the veil of life itself?_

_But her face is kind, even in its heartbreak, and the gentle hand she extends rises with the grace of a queen._ “We have only a little time. Please, Sir Knight — in this interstice of death and dream, you are my only hope to do what I could not.” _The folds of her kimono sweep eddies into ashes and the flaking, blood-caked soil as she walks forward, trailing her tatters like an empress would her train._

_“I am at your service.”_

_Her hand is trembling as Fai takes it, her fingers bruised and bloody, but Fai cares not for the ash or gore her touch smears across his skin. This close he can see the terrible wound at her breast, can see the dark and gaping hole that goes right through her slender body, and the gleam of broken bone exposed beneath torn silk._ “My life has ended — I cannot be saved. My Lord Husband is dead, and our people are gone; the Gods have abandoned us. But my son… please. My son still lives!”

_“Kurogane,” whispers Fai, and the Lady nods, her head dipping low. Fresh tears patter to the ground in heavy, mourning droplets. “How did— what great doom laid waste to Suwa? How can I save him?”_

_The Lady of Suwa looks up, and in her eyes is sorrow — but also steel, her gaze the cutting edge of a great blade drawn to protect those that fall beneath its aegis. Power, terrible and radiant, scorches from her touch, and ash explodes into the air in a dizzying cloud as a strange and powerful magic blooms out from her small figure like the halo of a star, a brilliant corona that brings tears to the eye. Fai does not scream, but only just; magic rips through him in an uncaring tide, a blistering wash of light that burns right through him to leave him cringing, and when it finally dims, Fai must turn his face away as the tears well and drip down his face in stinging drops._

“Look,” _says the Lady, and her voice is a command; Fai prises apart tear-wet lashes, his breath catching painfully in his chest at the change of scene before him. Polished floors of cedar wood, and the lacquered screens of the room’s walls glimmer brightly by the light of lanterns, the sweet scent of incense rising from smouldering sticks in their sacred censers, and fresh bunches of green and dew-dropped leaves woven knotted into wreaths adorning the altar at the heart of the shrine. At the foot of the dais, a woman, her hair a fall of darkest silk pooling in the folds of her robes as she kneels in prayer, and by her side —_

_By her side a boy, a youth of maybe fifteen, stern-faced and solemn as he kneels, his hands clasped in his lap and his dark head bowed. The knot at his belt that should hold a sword in sheath is open and empty, and his young spine is straight beneath the weight of fear and duty. Fai knows who he is. Fai knows him without doubt, even in dreaming, even before they ever met; and when Kurogane lifts his head at the sound of his mother’s gasp, Fai sees the eyes he knows as black coloured instead the same shade of brilliant red as the Lady’s own._

“I kept vigil, in the long days my Lord Husband would journey out to fight the demons that crowded our borders. Suwa was a land blessed by the Gods, but every blessing has its dark mirror; the sacred herbs we grew to use for healing tinctures renowned through all of Nihon also attracted demons from beneath the earth to prey upon our people.”

_As she prays she chokes on air, terrible wracking coughs shaking her slender body, but her voice does not falter for all her breath wheezes shallowly between each word. Kurogane rises to one knee, his brow creased and his eyes hurting, reaching out as though to steady his mother — trembling hands come to rest at her shoulders, lending support as she finds her breath once more._

“I had always been sickly, ever since the birth of my only son. He was a miracle unsought, my beautiful boy. With every day that passed he looked more and more like his father, and he grew ever more eager to protect our people alongside him. When my Lord went to battle, to fight demons beneath the banner of the Great God Ginryuu whose mark we bore so proudly, it was my duty to uphold the barriers that sheltered our home through prayer and power. My son pledged himself to protect me and the people who stayed behind in his father’s stead.”

_At the altar, the woman turns — bright upon her cheek are the scales of a dragon, gleaming pure silver in the lantern’s warm light. She lifts a gentle hand to her son’s face, to curve warm about his cheek, and she smiles upon the youth that already is more man than boy, not yet grown but ready to walk down the path of the Lord he will one day become. A touching moment, and a short lived one: between the arcs of sacred greenery at the altar a shadow warps, and Fai stifles a shout in his chest as space itself tears open for a hand to push through, a hideous weapon that reeks of wicked magic in its unholy grip._

_Red eyes widen and Kurogane roars in fury, moving faster than can be believed. With both hands he shoves his mother away from the path of the terrible blade, sending her sprawling across the polished floorboards with a roughness that surely saved her life. That did save her life, at the cost of his own — Fai flinches as that unearthly sword pierces clean through Kurogane’s chest to reach his heart in a single, killing blow. Blood, so much blood; it fountains forth from the violence of that awful wound, great dripping gouts that splatter across the altar itself, quenching incense and pooling in dripping puddles across the polished floorboards._

_The Lady of Suwa is silent as her memory-self screams, stumbling forward and splashing through her son’s pooling blood. At the altar, that unearthly hand withdraws back through its gaping tear, taking the sword it holds along with it, and tearing it from Kurogane’s chest with little resistance. He falls, tumbling to his knees, and then face-first towards the ground — he lands in his mother’s arms as she lurches clumsily forward to catch him, her robes already sopping with quickly-spreading crimson._

“Someone who loses their love is widowed, and a child who loses their parents is orphaned. But what is the word for a parent who loses their child?”

_The woman is crying, pawing desperately at the hole carved through the body of her son. Blood oozes between her fingers, no longer spurting; dripping slowly now without the strength of his beating heart to pump it. Kurogane is already dead. Kurogane was dead from the moment the blade pierced his body, as that tear in space began to close and the unknown assassin to withdraw, before his mother’s shaking, bloody hands could even touch his face._

“There is none. There is no word for such a horror, for the worst kind of pain that can be endured.”

_The woman of the past screams, a wordless wretched wail of such sublime agony Fai can feel its echo ripple through time and death and magic, the cry of a being who has plunged suddenly into utter despair. She collapses forward, folding over the body of her son, and her shoulders shake as she weeps, her arms knotted tight around Kurogane as she clings tight in one last embrace._

_Fai can bear no more. He looks away, as he must, and meets the gaze of the Lady as she is now: calm and kind and the master of her anguish. He cannot bear to look back and see her as she once was, but to look upon her now is not easy either, the heart that beats heavy in his breast fit to break at the depths of sorrow in the gaze that falls upon him, and the wound in her chest naked in its unbearable ugliness._

“I know now,” _says the Lady of Suwa, and her wine-dark eyes are gentle as they rise to meet Fai’s own._ “To be a mother that has outlived her child can only be called a tragedy.”

_But the death of one soul is not the death of a people entire, and somewhere in the horror Fai finds the breath to ask. “The sword, the blow that took his life — it broke the barriers you raised.” The warlock behind something so foul — for only one who consorted with darkness and the worst of magicks could work such a casting, tearing open the fabric of reality with ill-gotten power that left disaster in its wake — had surely meant the blow for the Lady herself, and not her noble son; but even if the lady survived, her protection did not, and the dread that strikes him burns down to the bone. “The demons you spoke of…”_

_The Lady of Suwa lifts her hand, and again Fai feels it: the burning flare of her power, hotter than any star as it crashes through him. The searing pain strikes lightning-fast and leaves Fai gasping against the firebright dazzle that flashes in front of his eyes, but when it clears the shrine is gone — the sky above is bloody red, clouds of ash rolling as thunderheads before the storm, and the screams of Suwa’s people cuts clean through the crash and roar of buildings collapsing._

_Demons. Dozens of them, eldritch and angular, insectoid limbs and multi-faceted eyes glittering with unholy hunger as dripping maws yawn hideously open. Blood splatters soil as limbs are torn and flesh rent, and the bile rising in Fai’s throat for a massacre long since committed burns all the way down as he swallows. In the chaos, amongst the pleas and prayers of the dying, the woman walks: a slow, crawling drag with her bloodstained robes trawling heavy in the dirt, the body of her son draped over her shoulders in macabre embrace. Kurogane’s eyes are sightless, clouded and staring as his head lolls slack, and Fai shudders._

_This man lives. Fai knows this man lives. But here, in this moment, Kurogane cannot be anything but dead._

_His body must be a burden, but the woman does not falter in her steps — as yet unnoticed by the demons that rampage across the castle grounds — as she crosses what was once a courtyard, careless of the flames that twist and scorch. As she walks, Kurogane’s arm comes to slip limply from her shoulder, dangling free with crimson dripping steady from his fingertips, and perhaps it is the scent of that young blood that at last catches the attention of the foul being that claws its way over the smouldering ruin before her in a tangle of clicking, chitinous limbs. The demon drops with terrible weight into garden beds that are still bursting with greenery, crushing leaf and stem beneath manifold claws, and the woman stills as she lifts her head to face it. The demon crouches upon its haunches, its long serpentine neck twisting as it bares its gruesome maw. Where the bruised and heart-shaped leaves of the plants brush against its ichorous hide, the skin smoulders and steams under their touch to leave new blisters on demon flesh._

_Ignorant of its new wounds, or perhaps simply uncaring, the demon roars, rows of teeth peeling back as it bellows. A heavy lump falls tumbling from its mouth, dropping to the stone of the courtyard with a meaty splat and the echoing clatter of steel ringing upon stone. A bloodied arm, torn away from the elbow down and with cold, dead fingers curled tightly. In that fisted hand, a sword grasped forcefully even in death, the blade itself an arc of silvered steel and scaled haft, the head of a dragon crowning the grip with ruby eyes gleaming._

_Beneath the body of her son, the woman trembles at the sight; her body sways just once with a great tremor, and the bright scales upon her cheek flicker and pop with light beneath dark smears of blood and ash._

“There is a kind of madness in grief _—_ a madness that burns, that eats through you until you have nothing left but the memory of what you had and how you lost it. I was burning. I knew my son was dead. I knew my husband was gone, the people I was sworn to protect were lost. I knew my God had abandoned me.”

_She screams again, and Fai feels it before the sound hits: a quaking in his ribs he can only suffer through as the woman lets loose the pure agony of inconsolable loss in a tearing shriek. But this time, her scream brings down more than her misery — it rings with power, the same power that bubbles up beneath her skin in lightning ripples and crackles from her fingers with static sparks. It booms outward in an aura of burning light that slashes through the air, slashes through the demon before her, jagged shards of her magic and her pain combined slicing deep into that slickly shining hide like the felling blow of some great blade. The creature shudders and howls, its many limbs skittering as it rears back frantically, but it is already too late. Chunks of chitin crack and burst as magic splits it open, and just as the woman pauses to draw another breath, the demon collapses in a grotesquerie of twitching limbs and oozing gore._

_Smoke curls up from its corpse, but the woman walks forward regardless, only stumbling when she comes to a stop in front of the arm that lies before the garden beds. Tenderly, she lowers the body of her son to lay upon the bloodied earth and herself to her knees beside it; then just as tenderly reaches for the arm itself, gently loosening the grip of curled fingers from about the sword hilt as she cradles it in her lap. Her fingers tremble as they stroke over the back of that hand, tracing the lines of some strange pattern no longer worn on dark and bloody skin, before she puts it carefully down and turns her red gaze upon the sword._

_Dread, of a kind Fai has never felt before, curls heavy in his gut._

“It did not matter. If Ginryuu would not answer my call, I would save my son myself. I had my husband’s sword and my own power.”

_The quiet of the moment is eerie — the distant crack and crunch of demons feasting and the cries of the dying muted by the blood pounding in Fai’s ears as he watches slender hands curl around that scaled haft, lifting it up and turning the long blade inwards with a slow gravity, letting it drift in her hands until the point rests at her breast. Magic, the same magic that had slain a demon with holy light, crackles along the hilt, leaping from scale to scale in silvery arcs as her fingers flex into a steady grip, crackling threads of power sparking down the rippled steel._

“So I did something unforgiveable.”

_Fai starts forward, even knowing he can do nothing, but ghostly hands clamp down on his shoulders to hold him still with the surety of the dead. He can only watch as the woman steadies her grip and drives the blade in deep, wrenching it across and through bone as she carves a deep rent clean through her breast, her eyes scrunched closed and her face taut with pain as blood spurts forth violently. A snarl curls her lips as she jerks the blade down and then rips it upwards once more, a crimson curtain pouring down her chest to soak quickly through already sodden silk as the sword is yanked outwards and thrown carelessly away. It skitters across the ground in flash of silver, flecks of gore spiralling from that razored edge as it spins. But she is not done: with two hands and shimmering magic glowing between her fingers, she claws at her chest with terrible force, splitting the wound open further still—_

_“No!” gasps Fai. “Please, tell me you did not—”_

_—and lifts from her breast her still-beating heart._

_Magic curls from her fingertips, sparking white-hot and burning through the dripping gore, but impossibly she does not falter: reaches out, her heart in her hands, and presses it gently to the gaping hole rent through her son’s chest. The power channelled through her fear and her fury is devastating, bright and beautiful and terrible as it arcs and shimmers beneath her hands, and as it melts into Kurogane’s body her tears fall to wet his face. Her body trembles with the strain, sheer will alone keeping her alive with all her magic channelled to the single point of contact between herself and her son — every drop of her life itself flowing like a current to the one she would save at any cost._

“I knew what I had done was wrong _—_ that there would be consequences unthinkable. But I would do it again, in a heartbeat.”

_The godmark upon her cheek begins to darken and fray, flaking away in specks of shadow that fall into the air like ashes. Red eyes are glassy and wet, her breath shallow and weak, and Fai recoils in horror as her magic changes. It darkens and warps, twisting into something awful even as Kurogane jerks bodily, his whole body arching in a bow as he gasps a dragging, choking breath. Bloodied fingers claw at the earth as he twitches and shudders, head tossing upon the ground and his eyes rolling as he wheezes and gags — but his eyes, oh Gods, oh Saints! His eyes are changing, black blooming across red like ink through water. Kurogane shudders as something moves under his skin, crawling up from his chest in a twisting snake of pulsing darkness, making Kurogane cough up dark, clotted blood to splatter down his chin as it wraps itself around his throat like a noose and squeezes tight. The most delicate wisp slithers up his jaw and unfurls across his cheek with frightening tenderness._

_Beneath the torn folds of his kimono Fai can see the ruin of his chest: what was once his godmark, bright silver scales tarnished, corruption spreading from that terrible wound and uncoiling in creeping tendrils beneath his mother’s fingers as she pours her love and despair into making him live. Torn flesh knits and scars, a hideous knot in the centre of the darkness staining his breast, but his skin is flushed with living warmth, and his chest is moving with each gulping breath._

_At the very last, she collapses, crumpling over the body of her son with slack-limbed exhaustion. Her face is grey beneath streaks of ash and bright gore, and the red eyes that her son once shared are cloudy and unseeing, her lips parted on a breath that does not come. But Kurogane is alive, coughing and shaking with blood on his lips; alive, and coming to consciousness as those black eyes flutter and blink before opening wide. He lifts a trembling hand and stares — lowers it down to the weight across his body, and tears well in black eyes as he touches his mother’s hair where it spills over his chest in long, tangled skeins. When realisation comes, it comes not with a scream, but with a slow and shaking breath and a hand that closes into a fist before slamming into the ground._

_“You saved him,” says Fai thickly, swallowing hard against the knot in his throat. Kurogane struggles to his feet, lifting his mother’s body and holding her tightly with one arm. “You died to save him. I don’t— I’ve never…” Fai trails off, his chest aching as he watches Kurogane cross slowly to where his father’s sword lays discarded. For a long still moment Kurogane simply stares down at the blade dripping wet with his mother’s blood, before reaching out to take it up with a shaking hand._

_Fai breathes in deep. “Your magic… it changed. I saw the corruption, the darkness that bled through it. My Lady, what did you do?”_

_The scorch and flash of her magic is her only answer, dazzling his eyes and sending agony sparking across his skull in whipping bursts of power too strong to bear. Fai curses against the pain, gasping for breath as his vision blurs, and then gasps again when he catches sight of the carnage before him. Kurogane stands with bowed head amidst scorched-out ruins, heaving for breath beneath a smoke-stained sky, and his mother’s body clutched tight with one trembling arm. Suwa castle is collapsed and smouldering, demonic corpses piled in ruined, oozing heaps across bloodstained and steaming earth. The blade in his hand is a slash of silver, its sharp edge glowing and hot, and demonic ichor spits and bubbles where he shakes it from the blade with a skilful flick._

_There is no screaming now, only the dull crackle of fire burnt down to embers, and the rasping sound of each harsh breath — but the sound of hoofbeats, low in the distance like rolling thunder, is drawing closer; close enough now that Kurogane looks up with bloody face and burning eyes, his gaze black and sightless even as he stares down the approaching sunrise. Shadows move across the horizon as dawn breaks, and as Suwa is bathed in warm umber and fading violet, Fai sees the knot of horses and their riders storm through the broken-down gates to the castle. The lead rider, her helmet gleaming gold as she lifts it free, turns her sun-kissed face to the sky as dark hair tumbles down her back and reveals herself the General-Regent, ten years younger than when Fai first saw her face. The bright rays of her godmark burn in the morning light as she stares Kurogane down, her composure unbroken even in the face of such devastation._

_She speaks, her mouth moving, but Fai hears nothing: only the pounding of his heartbeat and that same spitting crackle of wood crumbling beneath its own burning weight. So when she dismounts her horse, revealing her pillion rider, Fai can only stare at the Empress herself, a child in silvery robes and with bells in her hair, her young face shimmering with tears and moonlight both. The Empress lifts her arms, and her elder sister takes her weight easily, lifting her down from the saddle and to the burnt and bloody ground with gentle grace. Slowly, with her sister’s hand in her own, the Empress walks forward, and as she approaches Kurogane he turns to watch them both silently, taking a hesitant few steps in their direction._

_The Empress slows to a stop, the General-Regent standing tall behind her, gauntleted hands tight on her sister’s small shoulders, and something in Kurogane changes: his awkward steps turn smooth and his sword drags carelessly over rubble, sparks flaring from the tip, the tatters of his mother’s robe sweeping through the dirt as he breaks into a run on bare and bloody feet._

_Fai shouts, the sound torn helpless from his chest, but of course he is not heard, and Kurogane’s pounding run only quickens as he casts his mother aside like she was nothing at all, her body tumbling across blackened earth in a tangle of limbs. A snarl twists Kurogane’s mouth, his teeth wet with gore and a strange darkness burning in his eyes as the mark on his throat pulses with unholy power. He raises his blade with a roar, ready to strike — and a shimmering bolt of silver whistles through the air to pierce him right between the eyes, bursting into a web of glowing threads that wraps him from head to toe and knocks him clean off from his feet with swift and sudden violence._

_The Empress lowers her hand slowly, her sister’s grip released upon her shoulders, and small slippered feet carry her over to where Kurogane lies crumpled, gasping and retching as the web of the Empress’ power constricts. Where silvery thread lashes across bare skin red lines of blood quickly bloom, and where her magic touches the blackened coils of his godmark, blisters bubble and hiss. He screams as he struggles, a voiceless animal wail of fury — Fai’s heart aches to hear it, to know Kurogane was held so captive to this inner darkness that he almost lost himself entirely._

_Kurogane’s scream becomes a shriek when the Empress touches gently his forehead, a shriek that rises and reverbs and redoubles in the sheer agony of the sound. Pure light wells at the Empress’ fingertips, light that chases every shadow back to its most pitiful core, and as the morning sun breaks at last over the ruins of Suwa, a great and howling terror burns itself from Kurogane’s body, rising like smoke as it seethes into the air. The shadow of steel and a black moonless night, it ripples and roils as it is forced into shape: a serpentine neck and looping coils, a jagged dripping maw with sword-like teeth, eyes black as pitch and entirely soulless, and throughout it all thready wisps of gossamer silver — a symbol of the being as it once was._

_“_ Kusaryuu _,” declares the Lady of Suwa, and her voice strikes a chill down Fai’s spine in its despair. “_ Ginryuu no longer _—_ a God corrupted by a single, selfish wish.”

_Above Kurogane, the black dragon writhes in a knot of claws and teeth and scale, half-formed and wholly malevolent, but the Empress’ power holds it captive in a net of power and will. With a flick of her fingers she pulls the last of it out, dark and trailing shreds of its essence snapping free of Kurogane’s body; holding out both hands together now she forces it to compress, the web of her magic shrinking from the movements of her hands, and in one final gesture, flattens her palms and pushes downward, thrusting her power and the dark God both deep into the soil beneath the castle’s foundation._

_Kusaryuu, if it is as the Lady named it, disappears into the blackened burnt earth like ink soaking into paper, every last droplet wisping into the ground and out of sight. A shimmer of silver ripples quickly over the ground and beneath the feet of horses and humans both: the royal guard murmurs amongst itself and the General-Regent lifts a hand for silence as her sister sways gently on the spot, clearly weakened by the use of so much power. But she steadies herself at last, a small figure standing at Kurogane’s shoulder and looking down at the young man lying still and prone beneath her. Kurogane makes no sound, cut into stunned silence the moment Kusaryuu was torn from his body, and as the knotted net of magic that held him pinned fades into nothingness, he tries to rise, only to slump back down in exhaustion._

_The Empress murmurs something, too softly for Fai to hear, and Kurogane’s face crumples, his black eyes glittering wet. Slowly he curls in on himself, turning on his side and covering his face with one bloody hand; he shakes as he sobs, voiceless in his grief, and the Empress slips smoothly to her knees, laying a gentle hand atop his dark hair and closing her own eyes, silent tears slipping down her moonlit cheeks._

“I know not how the Tsukuyomu became aware of the fall of Suwa, and I know not how she could free my son from the darkblood of the God inside him, but I am grateful. I am grateful still that he was taken under her protection, brought safely to live away from the devastation that was once our home.” _Fai’s vision warps and dims as the Lady speaks, the scene before him blurring into shadow. For a moment there is only darkness and a sense of vertigo — like falling while standing still, the pitch of his surroundings a drunken reel that leaves Fai’s head spinning. But when he opens his eyes again, the ruins are as they ever were, and the Lady herself standing solemn in their shadow._

_Once more, they are two souls alone in the ghost of Suwa’s once great castle, and once more Fai finds himself staring in awe at the woman before him, her face gentle and the dreadful wound at her breast all the more terrible now that Fai knows of how it came to be. “My Lady,” he says, when he finds his voice once more, “I cannot fathom your loss, and I cannot express my sorrow for all you have suffered. But I… I do not know what it is you want of me. I am no great sorcerer — just a soldier, lucky enough to survive war a few times over.”_

“It is not your sorrow I called you for, Fai Fluorite,” _says the Lady calmly, and her mien is regal — gone now the weeping mother who mourned her son, and in her place the Lady who carved out her own heart to make him live once more._ “Indeed, it was chance alone that led you to me. Who would have known that a death-dreamer from Valeria would find their way to Nihon’s shores? No, I do not need your sorrow — I need your spear.” _Her red eyes are calm, their gaze heavy as it catches Fai and holds him in its thrall._ “You say you are only a soldier, but I see a survivor — a man who has defied death many times over. It matters not to me if it was luck or skill; either way, you are what I need to save my son.”

_She reaches out her hand, her fingers dark with ash and stained by blood. What else can Fai do but reach out in turn, taking her hand in his own?_

“My son has returned to slay Kusaryuu. If he is anything like the man that was his father, then I have no doubt he will succeed.” _The Lady smiles, and for a moment the glow of her happiness is that of a new bride, a life of love awaiting her with an adoring husband by her side. But it fades as it must, and once more her eyes are sad and solemn._ “Whether he will survive is another matter entirely. I have no doubt that if the killing blow came at the cost of his own life, he would still strike _—_ and I could not bear to know my son has died twice.”

 _Her hand on Fai’s tightens, a warrior’s grip as binding as any oath._ “I ask you, Fai Fluorite _—_ go to battle beside my son’s side. I ask not that you defeat a God, only that you lend your aid to the man who dares to do so.” _Her hand is just barely shaking now, the smallest of tremors that betrays her fear._ “Please. Keep him safe.”

_Fai was sworn to no master; he owed his fealty to no king or queen. Fai had sworn that he would never again serve another out of anything but his own will, his own drive to protect. His promise to aid Sakura had been made with a grateful heart, and became — over time and many miles shared — a love for the daughter he had never been blessed with._

_“My Lady.” It had been years since Fai had taken the knee, but the ache in his heart lends him grace, and he goes down smoothly. Fai bows low before her, her hand in both his own, and gently presses his forehead to the back of her fingers. “This I swear to you:  your son will not fight alone. My spear, my magic — I will use all of my strength to protect and aid him.”_

_“_ Then take my blessing, and in the moment of need may it grant you both power. _” A hand comes to rest on his head, gentle as her fingers touch his hair, and in that touch Fai feels her magic: not the burning brightness of her power in its desperate fury, but the blessing and the hope of a priestess seeing a soldier under her protection off to battle._ “O hear me, Protector of Suwa, Great Silver Dragon who soars through the heavens…” _Warmth, in her hand, spreading in a glow of gentle benediction that Fai can feel trickling from her fingers and sinking down through him as rain on parched earth._ “Give your blessing to those who go to battle in your name _—_ and keep them safe against the darkness!”

_The soft glow becomes an aurora too bright to bear, and Fai must close his eyes against the brilliance that bathes him now or else be blinded. The weight from his head is lifted, the touch in his hand dissolves to nothing — but the blessing remains, strong and sure and lighting him up from within as it warms him to the very core of his being: deeper than flesh, deeper than bone, and so powerful it rings through him like an echo that will never fade. Love, so much love; the love of a mother for her child, of a priestess for her people, of a woman for her country. The laughter bubbles up without thought or reason, a building joy in his heart that overflows like a dam burst: a fierce hope that leaves him dizzy with its blooming intensity and makes his hand tremble and his spirit soar. With such a blessing, with such a wish given in to his keeping, how can he be anything but victorious?_

_The light fades, and Fai opens his eyes with smile — but the Lady of Suwa is no more, and so too the ruins of her home. Vanished are the bones of the castle, the glassed and blistered earth; the unclean smoulder of cursed and burning embers casting dark smoke has been quenched at last. Now all Fai can see is a field of growing green, heart-shaped leaves swaying softly in the breeze and the air sweet with the healing scent of the life that grows anew from even the most grievous of loss._

_Fai stands, and if his smile fades a little, it does not leave him; it cannot, with the blessing he carries upon him now, a bright spark that will become a great light to raise against the darkness. The Lady is gone, but her son still lives — and by the oath he swore, Fai will do everything he can to keep him safe._

* * *

“Fai! _Fai!_ You have to wake up!”

Fai woke to the sun burning in his eyes and Sakura’s hands on his shoulders, shaking him with rattling determination as something papery flapped in his face. It was altogether too much for a man pulled straight from death’s dreaming shore, and the noise he made was half-grunt and all irritated, batting away girl and flitting thing both. His head hurt, and his mouth tasted like ozone, the crackle of foreign magic heavy on his tongue and burning in his chest.

“Sakura, what?” Fai swiped at the white flicker swooping in and out of his vision, snatching it up with one hand as he used the other to lever himself upright, his elbow sinking into leafy loam with a rustle. “A talisman?” It had to be, bird-shaped and moving under the power of several dark symbols blazoned amongst its folds and creases, a bright speck of red blood shining and wet on its paper breast as it flapped frantically between his fingers.

“Kurogane’s gone!” blurted Sakura, startling Fai into letting the paper-bird go _—_ it immediately flapped upwards, circling his head in swooping, darting flutters, folded wings slapping at his head and stirring tiny eddies through his hair.

 _That_ woke Fai up, the panic in her words dumping cold fear right into his blood. “Gone?”

“I woke up just before dawn _—_ Kurogane was standing right on the edge of the barrier, and as soon as the sun hit that sword he just walked right up to it and yanked it out of the ground!” said Sakura, scrambling backwards as Fai jolted to his feet. “The magic just _disappeared_ _—_ it was so strange, it was like when you take a step down the stairs but one of them is missing and your foot slips so you just _fall—_ ” Fai knew exactly what she meant, could feel that sick swoop in his belly right now as he struggled into his coat, swatting at the bird as it circled him predatorily.

“What is this thing doing?” he snapped, voice thinned with more fear than anger. “What does it _want_?”

Sakura was struggling into her boots, hopping awkwardly on one foot as she tugged them on. “I don’t know! I sat up when I felt the barrier go down, so I could see what Kurogane was doing _—_ he looked back, saw me, and pulled it from his coat pocket. He blew on it, and it flew towards me, and then he just walked away!”

A paper-folded beak snatched at a lock of Fai’s hair, tugging painfully enough that his eyes watered as the bird pulled away from him, fluttering demandingly. “I think it wants us to follow it?” suggested Sakura, throwing her satchel over her shoulder. Fai didn’t bother with his pack, nudging it into the hollow of a tree stump before kicking dirt over the ashes of their burned-down fire with the battered toes of his boots; unlike Sakura, he knew better than to take his boots off to sleep.

“Which way did Kurogane go?” asked Fai as Sakura righted herself, already making for the edge of the forest. The speed of his steps betrayed his nerves, the tugging in his hair as the bird swooped about spiking pain into his heavy skull. Fai had no doubt the talisman was meant to lead them to the sacred herbs Sakura was looking for, and most significantly, _away_ from Kurogane himself; the better to leave him to his own means as he made for the castle demesne.

“I didn’t see,” she said, crunching through the undergrowth to catch up, and nearly tripped over the rotting roots of a half-decayed stump _—_ Fai caught her by the elbow and tugged her upright without missing a step. “Towards the sun, over that way.” Sakura pointed in the direction of the distant shadows beyond the grassy fields _—_ where instinct and dreadful knowledge told Fai Suwa’s castle had once stood. “Fai… you were dreaming when I woke you.” It was not a question, and the tone of her voice leant weight to the words: Sakura knew what it was for Fai to dream, and to dream so deeply that even the dying magic of a barrier falling could not rouse him from his slumber. “Was it about Kurogane?”

Fai paused on the edge of glassy soil, hesitant to both explain and to step across the blackened surface. But here he could see Kurogane’s footprints, the heavy tread of his boots splintering through the burnt surface and to the rusty soil beneath with every step, each footfall lit by the morning sun until it blazed as a burning-red track that lead right across like a path of stones in a riverbed. Kurogane’s trail lead to the barrier’s edge and over it, disappearing into the ocean of grass that undulated in wind-tossed waves over the other side. There was no hesitance in the trail of those footprints, no doubling-back or stutter-stepping, and Fai could not afford to hesitate either.

“I spoke to his mother,” he said softly, and the crunch of his own boots on scorched earth crackled like lightning. _She asked me to save him_ was what he could not say, but he felt it in his gut, in the pulse that throbbed in his throat and the static tingling in his fingertips as his own magic stirred uneasily. The Lady’s blessing was like holding an ember in his chest, a caged spark inside his ribs that wanted desperately to flare into purifying flame.

“He’s going to do something dangerous, isn’t he?” Sakura was young, but she was no fool, and the quickness of her response spoke of fears already considered. “I could feel the pain on him _—_ it’s like a sickness of the blood, festering beneath the skin.” An apt description for the unholy corruption of his godmark, and a harbinger in itself of the trouble to come: for the evil to be bled clean from Suwa, the dark dragon would need to be slain, and Kurogane himself would have to be the cleansing blade.

“Yes.” _And I must not let him do it alone._

“Then you have to go find him.” Sakura’s hand wrapped around his elbow as Fai stopped in his tracks, too stunned to speak. Even the insistent pulling of Kurogane’s talisman in the tangle of his hair could not startle the words from where they bottled in Fai’s throat, the hook of his breath whistling painfully as Sakura’s hand slipped down his arm to squeeze about his own.

“Sakura _—_ ”

“His mother must have waited a long time after she died for someone to come who could speak with her,” Sakura said quietly, looking down at their twined fingers and the pockmarked glaze of the black earth beneath them, dusty red soil oozing up like blood between the fractures their steps had broken into its crusted surface. “A very long time, not knowing if she would ever be heard. It isn’t just _coincidence_ that you were the one to come here, Fai.” When she looked up at him, the smile on her face was hurting and her green eyes were glimmering wet. “I knew there was a reason why I met you, and _this is it —_ so I could save you, so _you_ could come here and _save Kurogane_.”

Saints and stars, but Fai loved this girl. “I will not leave you,” he said thickly, the stinging in his eyes and the brilliant, aching burn of the blessing he carried inside almost too much. “Sakura, I need to keep you safe too _—_ ”

“You’re not _leaving_ me, silly,” laughed Sakura, and smeared the tearful line that ran down her cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re just going to find someone who needs you more right now. I’ve got my quest and you’ve got yours, and we’ll both meet up again afterwards. I know it’s too dangerous for me to follow you,” she added, sniffling a bit, and her nose crinkled up in the way it always did when she was trying to hold back her tears. “I know you’re going to fight, and you’re going to get hurt _—_ Kurogane too if he isn’t hurt already. So I have to go and get the medicine for both of you for when you come back.”

Fai swallowed, and lifted his hand to stroke her hair back from her face. So young and already she was wiser than he had ever been. Her pragmatism helped settle him, ground him, bringing his mind back to what he needed to do. “Sakura, I have to go.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, smiling, and then reached up on tiptoes to capture the paper talisman flapping about in his hair. It calmed almost immediately in her cupped hands, folding in on itself as it stilled at her touch, and Fai felt a pang of disbelief at how easily she had mastered it. “I’ll be fine _—_ this little one will take me where I need to go.” Inked characters rippled like feather marks across paper, delicately creased wings fluttering against her palms, and the bright spot of Kurogane’s blood gleamed ruby-red. Fai had no doubt she was right. “Go,” said Sakura, and this time her smile was stronger, the glitter in her eyes more determination than tears. “What are you waiting for? _Go!_ ”

Fai did not wait, and he did not look back _—_ he let his feet fly as he bolted for the edge of the barrier-line and crashed into the grass beyond, the sharp green smell of crushed greenery pluming up around him as he ran. The magic that had been simmering beneath his skin since first he set foot on Nihon’s soil was surging in him, and Fai thought of eagles in competing flight against the storm, of snowfall that gained momentum as it plummeted down the mountainside, of water drawing back from the riverbanks before it became the flooding wave _—_ he thought of this and let the power build as it raced down his legs, making his footsteps light and his muscles burn.

Long grasses whipped against his trews, so fast their lashing blades stung, but Fai did not _— could not_ _—_ stop, could only go faster still, his teeth bare and his breath a howling in his chest with every stride. The shadow of Suwa’s ruins became clearer by the moment as he drew nearer. The blessing was boiling in him now, sharp and hot and crackling with all the magic the Lady had poured into Fai, his body a vessel for her power and her hope. Her hope that Kurogane would live, for she could bear no other fate for the son she loved beyond reason.

The grass of the fields gave way to scattered copses of trees, and a long-forgotten earthen road that wound up the slope of a hillside ringed by crumbling walls of hewn stone. Gravel crunched beneath Fai’s flying feet as he dashed towards the buried bones of the castle and the darkening clouds that coalesced above it, unnaturally dark against the morning’s blue sky. Some strange gravity warped out from blackened stone where flames had lashed the castle’s foundations, and with every step that heavy foreboding grew: a crushing pressure, unseen but felt in the gut. Fai let the first burst of his magic snap from his fingertips in a lightning strike, a white-hot bolt that cracked off the crumbling stonework of the broken gate-posts and shattered that foul miasma before it could seep into his bones as he passed over the entrance and into the grounds of Suwa castle.

Immediately his ears popped, the world shaking with the roar of battle as it thundered into his skull; the sky that had been so blue beyond the castle walls burned an unnatural and eye-watering dusk above him, stained into starless night, and the smell of burning metal hissed acrid across his tongue with every gasp of breath. Fai stumbled to a stop, heart drumming in his chest as his boots skidded over churned and heaping earth _—_ like his dreaming, the shattered remains of the castle were burnt and warped, a sprawling blackened ruin that lay scattered across the devastated courtyard, and the cracking retort of pistols boomed inside his skull.

Kurogane was here _—_ Kurogane was _fighting_ , and Fai could not let him fight alone. Not any more.

Each shot Kurogane fired cracked through the air like bones breaking, and Fai followed the sound, darting through burnt-out buildings and jumping through the skeletal remains of palatial rooms, coughing up ashes as he went. Against the sky and its voidful darkness, a shadow was rising: long and serpentine and cruelly spiked, the ghost of its outline shimmering and warping as it fought to take shape, and every shot from Kurogane’s pistols blasted white-hot holes through its blackening hide. The glowing scorch of holy magic blistered and smoked as it ate away at the very substance of the beast, but it was not enough _—_ as each burning wound opened in its writhing, serpentine body more shadow-stuff sprouted forth to fill them, and Fai heard the repeated _click-click-click!_ of Kurogane running out of ammunition before he was even halfway across the castle grounds.

_“Kusaryuu!”_

The roar was a battle-cry, a threat, and the dragon bellowed its own riposte in a bone-rattling screech that scraped across Fai’s brain like claws down rusting metal, pricking tears in his eyes and the heavy wet drip of blood from his nose. It touched his lip, salty and hot, and Fai smeared it across his face with the back of his sleeve, snorting out gory bubbles as he coughed _—_ but he kept running, and as he ran he let the stinging crackle of his own magic well up in his hands. The static heaviness of battle-spells ready to fire made his wrists ache like they used to on the battlefield, and the grin that cut across his face was a soldier’s smirk, brave and foolish all in one.

“Kurogane!” The name tore from his throat unbidden, and Fai shouted it to the sky, watched the pitch-black clouds shake and warp beneath the thunder of his voice. _“Kurogane!”_

There he was, in the courtyard where his mother had died: tall and battered and caked with burning streaks of ash with his father’s sword thrust tarnished and rusted through the loop of his belt. His coat was torn, flapping loose across his shoulders, and the white shirt beneath was splattered with dark blood and even fouler things. The tail of his hair was a dark silken pennant as it fluttered and whipped with every movement, spilling over his shoulder, and one sleeve had been ripped away entirely, baring skin that rippled with black scales that seemed to twist and writhe as they bled down towards his wrist. Just how far did his godmark spread? Fai had only seen the coiling snare about his throat, and the dark starburst of his fatal wound that hatched his chest with raised and rippled scars _—_ was there any part of him at all that had not been marked by death or violence?

“Demons _below_ ,” snarled Kurogane, and the black gleam of his eyes was _furious._ “What in the name of hell’s rotting gates are _you_ doing here?”

Fai laughed in the face of that incredulous anger, because what could he say _— I swore an oath to your Lady Mother I would save you from the death you race towards?_ Kurogane would likely backhand him across the face for even mentioning her, even if it was true. “I came to help,” Fai managed, scrambling over a chunk of rubble and skidding across black earth to Kurogane’s side. Kusaryuu, not to be ignored, roared another challenge and reared back, its spiked spine bristling with menace as it smashed its body across the courtyard.

The lashing sweep of a draconic tail whipped across the ground before them, kicking up a shower of rubble, and Kurogane tossed his pistols aside as they both rolled for cover. His revolvers clattered across the cracked pavers as Kurogane threw up both hands with a shout, a barrier booming from the spread of his fingers in a rush of raw magic. There was no skill to it, but no end to the power behind it, and the silvery shimmer that flashed across the arc of the barricade with every crumbling stone that crashed against it felt so strongly of the Lady’s own magic that it gave Fai vertigo. Her son had her heart _—_ did he have her magic too?

“If you want to help, stay out of my way!” grunted Kurogane, dropping his arms without ceremony; his barrier dropped just as quickly, melting into nothing as he lurched forward, and the leather of his belt snapped and frayed as he drew his father’s sword with a frustrated yell.

“No!” snapped Fai, because he _couldn’t_ _—_ not with so heavy an oath as the one he’d sworn burning a hole in his chest. Regardless of whether or not Kurogane wanted his aid, he was going to get it, and Fai gritted his teeth against the burn in his fingertips as he raised his left hand, the bracelet of his fingers curling around his own wrist to brace it. “ _Fluorspar!_ ” Fai screamed, and lightning burst from his palm, crystallising into craggy bolts of blue and gold, each sizzling shard shattering in a burning hail of electricity against Kusaryuu’s heaving hide as spear after spear whistled across the courtyard.

The dark dragon shrieked, an agonised wail as chunks of magic tore through its half-formed essence, and Kurogane _stared_ with wide and glittering eyes, his face flushed and his lips parted in shock as Fai stood panting, static crackling from his smoking fingertips. “Fluorite is the lightning stone,” rasped Fai, trembling a little with the pain of pouring so much force into such a powerful spell with hardly any time to prepare. “My title in the Ceresian army was the Knight of the Thunder Spear.”

Kurogane licked a bead of blood from his cracked lips, the wicked curve of his lips almost like a smile. “Fine. You can help.”

His smile fell as black eyes darted quickly over Fai’s shoulder, and Kurogane snatched at Fai’s elbow with rough fingers, yanking him forcefully to the side and behind a heaped-up pile of chunked masonry. Kusaryuu screeched as it reared, serpentine limbs and coils lashing about in a tangling fury, but its blows were undirected _—_ one of Fai’s spears had smashed into its snarling face, bloodying both eyes and splattering steaming black ichor all over the place as it thrashed, and they had a precious few moments to plan before the beast figured out where they were.

“How do we do this?” gasped Fai, his back pressed against scorched stone. He could still feel the heat of the fire that had cracked it so long ago smouldering in its depths, even through the thickness of his coat.

“This is the only thing that can kill it,” panted Kurogane, a strand of dark hair stuck to his face with blood. He lifted his father’s sword in his hand, and Fai could see the steel of its blade was blackened and pitted, its edge rusted and oozing with some foul liquid; black droplets steamed against the soil as they dripped from its tip. “It was made from Ginryuu’s tooth centuries ago _—_ a dragon’s fang to slay a dragon.” Ten years as a barrier’s focus had not been kind to the sword, but Fai had no doubt Kurogane believed in its power, and that belief was a strong enough to make it true. “I just need to get close enough to the damn thing to strike.”

“I can help with that,” began Fai, and then choked as the hot ember in his chest squirmed beneath his ribs _—_ the sensation of strange power sizzling inside him was almost sickeningly strong, and Fai struggled for breath as the bright spark of the Lady’s magic he’d taken into himself pulsed insistently. “What _— nnh!_ ”

Fai slid downwards, his back scraping stone, and clutched at his chest with a moan. The Lady’s blessing was unbearably hot now, where before it had been comfortingly warm: less an ember and more a coal bursting into white incandescence. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, crawling up his throat like glowing shards of flame, and Fai wheezed against the constriction as it threatened to burn the breath from him entirely. Steam plumed from his lips, scalding hot and shimmering with motes of magic, and Kurogane’s hand fell tight around his upper arm to hold him upright.

“ _You_ ,” Kurogane whispered, bending low to catch Fai’s gaze, and his eyes were so, so dark where they should have been red. “I feel my mother’s magic… in you.”

“I saw her, in a dream beyond death. She gave me her blessing,” gasped Fai, without thinking; of course that would make no sense at all to the man leaning so close to him, but there was no time to explain. His hand moved without his will to do so, snatching a handful of Kurogane’s shirt and dragging him closer still. Bloodied cloth strained in his fingertips as he pulled Kurogane down, and one hand floated up Kurogane’s neck to tangle in dark hair. Fai’s vision was fogged with heat and the drunken haze of power boiling up from the furnace in his chest, enough to leave him trembling. “This is yours,” he murmured, the words thickened by the magic pooling on his tongue. “I need to give it to you,” Fai announced, just before the urge overtook him completely, surging through him irresistibly as he jerked forward and sealed his lips against Kurogane’s own.

It poured out of him like a flood, that hot and holy power he’d been blessed with, and Fai whimpered unwillingly as the dizzying drain tingled over every inch of skin he possessed. His eyes rolled and his body swayed, but Kurogane caught him with just one arm and held him firm, the grip of his a brand of heat that burned into Fai through the layers of his clothes as he pressed closer still. It hurt so badly, but it was _good_ , giving the power up like this _—_ it had never been Fai’s to own in the first place, only his to hold for a little while, and the thirst of Kurogane’s mouth as it moved against him, drinking down every drop of magic Fai had to give, felt so right it rang through Fai like the toll of silver bells ringing.

Their mouths parted with a hiss of steam, pluming now from both their lips, and the heaviness of Kurogane’s gaze as it trailed over Fai’s face felt like a physical touch, the stroke of a hand on skin sensitised and sore with wanting.

“Do you feel it?” asked Fai, and did not tremble at all, even if his knees had all but buckled him back against his stony support.

Kurogane swallowed, slowly, the roll of his throat vulnerable and slow. “ _Yes_ ,” he rasped, and the gleam in his eye suggested something much more before a furious screech and the crunching crash of ruins collapsing beneath the weight of a raging dragon made them both jolt _—_ the danger they were in could not be forgotten. “Now we fight,” growled Kurogane, pulling Fai to his feet with that strong grip.

Fai grinned, the heady pounding of his heart and the light, giddy space inside him where the Lady’s power had been enough to tease a soft laugh from his chest. “Yes,” said Fai, and held Kurogane’s eyes with his own even as Kusaryuu rampaged behind them. “Let’s.”

* * *

It was not the first time Fai had rained thunderous hell down upon the battlefield, but it would have to be the _best_ _—_ battle had never sung in his heart like this, a vicious screaming joy for a terrible foe destined to be vanquished. For Kusaryuu, the dark dragon, would surely perish; the snarl on Kurogane’s face as he darted between the striking spears of Fai’s own lightning was its own kind of fierce, and the man himself a terror in his own right. Those dark eyes were hot and fathomless, the tail of his hair whipping like a war banner. The blood on Kurogane’s face was carved in lines by the rivers of his sweat, his stark features all the more prominent as chiaroscuro patterns of gore cast them in sharp relief.

The black pulsing of the godmark at his throat rippled and undulated in serpent coils, a living noose, but Kurogane could not be caught. No matter the blows that came crashing down by flailing claw or lashing limb, he would not stand still for them, using the crack and sizzle of Fai’s magic as his shattering shield. Here, a darting slash that sliced off three wicked talons; there a roaring thrust that caved in a section of that filthy oozing hide and broke bone into the open air. His opponent was a towering beast of eldritch proportion, half-real and wholly monstrous, but Kurogane was a warrior born, and had trained for this through long years of despair and fury _—_ Fai knew without asking that Kurogane had devoted himself to this revenge from the very moment the God had been pulled screaming from his wounded soul.

“Fluorspar!”

The stony pillars erupted in bursting spears of crystal and lightning, crackling with all the power Fai could pour into them with his fingers clawed in the dirt as he crouched low, and the electric burn that seared down his arms sparked all the way through blood-soaked earth in dancing arcs of blue-gold light. Seven sharp spears, to pen the beast in _—_ to force Kusaryuu back in a tight circle upon itself, driving it towards Kurogane’s flashing blade. And the blade did flash, flakes of rust and strips of smouldering darkness peeling from his father’s sword with each dancing strike until naked steel glowed clean with the same bright aura as his mother’s magic, a white-hot glitter along its razored edge.

The Lady’s blessing was upon her son, and he _burned_ with it.

“Lightning!” howled Fai and it came to his call: a blue bolt from the black sky, the air burning in its screaming wake as it crashed over a scaled hide, tearing open great rents across Kusaryuu’s rippling body and splattering steaming ichor all across the soil. Dark and steaming flecks peppered Kurogane’s body, sizzling through his clothes and blistering across his skin, but the shout he gave was a victorious one, and he leapt from the crumbling ledge of a stony heap to drive his sword deep into the dragon’s spine. The shattering crack of bone rang out like thunder, and Kusaryuu _shrieked_ in agony _—_ the skull-scraping sound brought tears to Fai’s eyes and a hot wet drip from his ears and nose, but he spat out a bloody mouthful and charged forward anyway, calling his magic into his hands until the air itself broiled with electricity.

Kurogane roared, a wordless song of rage and pain tearing from his throat. The great fountain of ichor that spurted up as Kurogane yanked his sword free splashed over Kusaryuu’s spiny back in a wash of gore, but Kurogane was not done _—_ he clamped the hilt of his sword in his teeth, climbing hand over hand across slippery, steaming scales as the dragon thrashed, making for Kusaryuu’s head with furious determination. The creature’s back legs and tail were no longer moving _—_ its spine broken by that single, forceful strike _—_ but a great clawed foreleg lashed up and back over its own twisting coils as Kusaryuu screamed with temper, wickedly curved talons slashing at Kurogane as he climbed.

_“No!”_

The scorching storm of lightning that ripped from Fai’s palms was not a true spell, not a battle-cry enchantment mastered in his time as a knight at war: simply pure magic itself, tempered by fury and twisted into glowing filaments that seared everything they touched. Chunks of scales exploded and cracked as gilt-edged darts of blue burst across Kusaryuu’s black hide, leaving the beast to cry out in desperate agony as it was shocked into painful paralysis, just long enough for Kurogane to reach the great sweeping arcs of its daggered horns.

Kurogane stood on shaking legs on the edge of the great dragon’s serpentine skull, his sword held aloft with point knifing downwards and both hands upon its silver-scaled grip. He was injured and trembling, his clothes tattered to expose burnt and blistered skin that seethed with the dark scales of his godmark, and tie that held his hair had snapped, letting it tumble free in tangled locks clumped with blood. The tears on his face glittered wet as they cut through the gore smeared into his skin _—_ but he was valiant and unbroken, a conqueror standing triumphant upon the body of the beast that had once dragged him down into despair.

“Kusaryuu,” Kurogane rasped, and then shook his head, the curve of his sword glowing with power as he towered above the beast below him. “ _Ginryuu_. A God you were once _—_ the Great Silver Dragon and Protector of Suwa.” Kurogane’s voice grew in power as he spoke, becoming sharp and clarion-clear; more than loud enough for Fai to hear him even in the shadow of Kusaryuu’s body. Fading crackles of electricity shimmered and burst upon that black and scaly hide, but the dragon did not _—_ could not _—_ move, lying prone and defeated upon the ruined earth. “You are a God no more,” declared Kurogane. He lifted his sword high above his head slowly, its white-hot edge glittering, and the hard muscle of his arms pulled powerfully taut as he prepared to strike. “With this sword, _I bring your death!_ ”

The fall of Kurogane’s sword was a burning star, a stroke of pure light slicing through the dark. It drove through scale and bone by sheer power and will, and left a shattering in its wake _—_ the dark dragon Kusaryuu could not scream or thrash as death came in one swift blow. The black void above cracked open, blue sky and warm sunlight burning through, and an explosion of foul and seething energy burst out from the dragon’s collapsing body. The shockwave knocked Kurogane high into the air with concussive force and a shout tore out of Fai’s chest as he started to fall, plummeting down towards the broken stone of Suwa castle.

“ _Kurogane!_ ”

Magic flared at Fai’s fingertips, a howling gale pushed from his thrusting palms, and Kurogane’s limp body tumbled into the cushion of air Fai whipped beneath him with barely a second to spare. It wasn’t enough to catch him, only to slow his fall _—_ Kurogane landed with a sickening _crack!_ upon heaped up rubble, and Fai’s gut twisted in horror as his head rolled on his arched neck. Kurogane’s sword tumbled from the lifeless fingers of one bent arm, silver steel clattering to the dark soil, and Fai’s legs burned as he ran, his heart pounding with each desperate stride.

“Saints have mercy _—_ oh Gods, _please_ _—_ he’s already died once, don’t let him die again!” Fai skidded to his knees, sharp chunks of stone tearing through his trews and his skin both, but his hands were frantic on Kurogane’s crumpled body, fluttering over his still chest. “If you die, I can never face you again,” Fai gasped. His vision was blurring in the bright sunlight, wetness dripping to his mouth and stinging salty on his split lip. “I don’t want to see you in my dreams, so you need to live!” If it was a prayer, it was not heard _—_ Kurogane was not breathing, his face slack and the terrible coils of his godmark pulsing like a tightening noose as they squeezed about his throat _—_

“Get out of him!” snarled Fai, and the hands that knotted in Kurogane’s torn shirt ripped it open further, baring the dark scales that roiled over bruised skin and the gruesome scar gnarled into Kurogane’s breast. “He is no longer yours! _Kusaryuu—!_ ” Fai choked on a sob, trembling with something he couldn’t name. Grief for a life lived in loss and pain, mourning for a future that would not come _—_ whatever it was, it rolled over him like a storm, a thunder in his heart that rained sorrow right down to his bones and left him aching.

“I swore to her I would protect you,” Fai whispered, and the taste of his tears was so bitter. He slumped down, pressing his forehead to the swell of Kurogane’s shoulder and his hand to the scar over his heart. That wound had taken Kurogane’s life once, and now again _—_ there was no heart to give him that could save him this time, only the cursed scales Kusaryuu’s mark had left upon his body, scales that stung and shimmered against Fai’s raw fingertips in a way that _almost_ felt like _—_

“ _Nnhhh_ …”

A burning beneath his fingertips and the faintest, weakest breath jerked Fai upright. Black and twisting scales covered Kurogane’s body, almost every inch of skin exposed below his throat, but where Fai’s hand had been there were crumbling flakes of darkness burning away beneath the sunlight, and clear skin emerging where it had never been before. Fai gasped, grabbing at Kurogane’s shoulders _—_ too late he remembered how badly Kurogane had been hurt, and his grip gentled, one hand sliding beneath the nape of Kurogane’s neck and into the tangle of his hair to hold his head steady as he wrapped his arm behind Kurogane’s back.

“Kurogane? Wake up _— please_ wake up.”

The tattered folds of Kurogane’s shirt fluttered as Fai shifted Kurogane into his arms, heavy and solid and _breathing_ despite all the odds. As the dark scales blazoned on Kurogane’s chest crumbled and faded, flaking away to nothingness, so too the coils around his throat loosened, slithering into nothingness to leave naught but dusky skin beneath them. With terrible slowness Kurogane’s ribs rose and fell, each breath stuttering and rasped _—_ but he was _breathing_ , and that was a victory as far as Fai was concerned.

All Fai could do was watch as the last of the scales flaked away, fading right up to the tattered edges of Kurogane’s remaining clothes and under them, and something like hope swelled in his chest when Kurogane coughed painfully, his nose scrunching up and his head lolling to bump up against Fai’s shoulder as he sunk heavily into Fai’s arms. “Nngh,” came the hoarse grunt, but it was damn near poetry to Fai as Kurogane coughed again and finally managed to speak. “Kusaryuu… gone?”

“Yes,” said Fai, and bit his lip to keep from shouting in joy. “You _—_ I would not believe it, had I not seen it, but _you killed a God_.”

“Good,” sighed Kurogane, eyelids fluttering _—_ and then he hissed, his face screwing up angrily as he tried to lift his arm. “My eyes _— gah!”_

Fai dragged the edge of his sleeve into his hand, and reached over to wipe the gore and gunk from Kurogane’s face. His own clothes were hardly any cleaner that Kurogane’s blood-soaked tatters, but it would have to do, and the worn fabric was quickly crusted with ichor as he carefully scraped the worst of it from Kurogane’s eyes, provoking another hiss and a twitch from Kurogane’s leg where it had flopped over Fai’s knee. Another good sign: if Kurogane could move all four limbs it was unlikely his back was broken. “There _—_ I can’t do much more without water, but that should help.”

When Kurogane blinked his eyes open cautiously, they were obviously swollen and sore _—_ and they were _red_ , the black stain of Kusaryuu’s influence seeping from his lashes like tears to leave Kurogane’s eyes as red as once they had been. Kurogane had his mother’s eyes once more, and her heart in his chest, each beat growing stronger as the last of the dark curse left his body. The fierce surge of joy was dizzying, Fai pressing his face to the top of Kurogane’s head and huffing out a laugh with the last of his tears. Gods alone knew what would become of them next, but for this moment, this battered and bloodied moment, everything was _perfect_.

“The girl,” mumbled Kurogane, sighing a little against Fai’s shoulder. “ _Sakura_. You left her.”

“You left us,” Fai countered, but with no real heat, and it was on the tip of his tongue to remark that Kurogane had no grounds for judgement at all when the man in his arms stiffened just slightly, struggling to sit up. “Oh no you _don’t_ ,” snapped Fai, squeezing his hold tighter; Kurogane grunted but did not fight it, leaning heavily into Fai’s arms. “You’re staying right where you are, until it’s been a little longer than a mere moment from you cheating death.”

“I know I’m hurt,” rumbled Kurogane. “I’m not trying to go anywhere. It’s just — my talisman. It’s drawing closer.”

_“Fai! Kurogane! Faaiii!”_

Sakura’s voice rang out, clear against the blue sky and the soft whisper of the breeze, and if Fai had an arm to wave he would have; as it was he could only laugh, calling out to Sakura as she approached the ruins. “Sakura! Come through the gates — we’re in the courtyard!”

Suwa was gone. The castle was ruined, its grounds devastated beyond all hope, but beneath daylight it was not so stark a horror as it had been beneath Kusaryuu’s shadow. Many lives had been lost, and blood had soaked once sacred soil — a terrible wounding that could not be undone. But as Sakura crested the hill to pass between the gates, Kurogane’s talisman fluttering about her head and a hopeful smile bursting bright across Sakura’s face as she broke into a run, Fai had to think that maybe the great hurt that had befallen this place might one day be able to scar into a gentler sorrow. A scar was only a sign that a wound had healed, after all.

The fear that creased Sakura’s face left her expression sorrowful, but Fai could see the relief in green eyes as she drew closer, her satchel swinging heavy on her shoulder and her travelling robes caked with dirt and leaf litter. “I found the herbs — the medicinal plants I needed,” she blurted out, coming quickly to Fai’s side across the courtyard. Kurogane's talisman flapped frantically above her head. “You’re hurt — my _magic_ — I can help,” she added, dropping down onto the stony rubble where Kurogane lay, half in Fai’s lap and half sprawled across the rough and rocky heap. “ _Please_ let me help you.”

Kurogane grunted acquiescence, and Sakura flew into action, her dirt-speckled hands glowing warmly as she leant over Kurogane’s prone body. “I don’t know the details, but I know you did something very dangerous — and once you’re better you’re going to get a lecture about it,” she mumbled, still too close to worry to make her words anything like playful. “For now, this is enough.” The spillover from Sakura’s magic was soothing where it melted over Fai’s skin, the lapping edges of her power soaking healing light into his bones like sinking into a hot bath, and Fai felt the tightness in his chest of magical exhaustion slip loose after just a few minutes of her power working upon him.

Kurogane would need more, much more than merely a few healing cantrips — one of his arms was definitely fractured, if not broken, and the hitch in his breath suggested something was at the very least jarred in his ribcage — but he was no longer standing with one foot on death’s shore. They had the time, now, and Sakura the determined skill; a few days under her care, and Kurogane would be better than he had been before. Much better than before, without the dark coils of Kusaryuu’s noose around his neck.

“The herbs,” said Kurogane, after a little while. He sounded drowsy, his voice rasping on the edge of sleep. “You found them?”

Smiling, Sakura leant back, lifting her hands from Kurogane’s chest. The glow of her magic flickered briefly as she heaved her satchel into her lap, but her fingertips were still glowing as she lifted a cloth-wrapped bundle from its pockets with careful delicacy. “Yes, I did — there were so many, growing wild. They’re so beautiful.” Gently, she lifted loose a seedling from its wrapping, soil still clinging to its roots; its leaves were green with life and simply beautiful, and the small plant seemed to shiver at Sakura’s touch as she trailed her fingertips delicately from tip to stem of the largest, heart-shaped leaf.

“My mother grew them,” slurred Kurogane, teetering on the edge of collapse, and Fai squeezed his arms a little tighter around Kurogane without meaning to at all. “In the castle gardens. _Dragonheart_ , we called them.” He blinked heavily, weighed down by injury and the exhaustion of the battle won, but the edge of his voice was almost pleading as he managed to keep talking. “Before,” he mumbled, head swaying on Fai’s shoulder, “before you leave me, can you help it grow again?”

“Before _we_ leave,” corrected Sakura gently, and in her hands the little seedling trembled, shaking the soil from its roots as it began to grow, twining tendrils of new life between Sakura’s fingers as her magic coaxed it into life. “Kurogane, you’re coming with us. Before we leave together, I will. And you’ll help me,” she murmured, the plant in her hands blooming with new leaves, each one as perfectly heart-shaped as all the ones that had come before it, its eager growth a memory of the gardens of Suwa’s past. “I promise you — Suwa will be green again one day.”

Kurogane did not speak. Perhaps he could not, or perhaps the wet shimmer in red-again eyes was too much for words. But when Fai’s hand slipped down his shoulder to help him lift his trembling arm, and their fingers entwined as Sakura reached out her hands to lay the growing seedling gently in his palm, Fai understood. There would be time for talking later, when the growing was done and the healing had begun. For now, this was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're reading this in September 2018 and would like to vote for my fic in the 2018 KuroFai Olympics, please head on over to the KuroFai Community on dreamwidth; the official voting post is [here.](https://kurofai.dreamwidth.org/111738.html)
> 
> The name for Kusaryuu came from the words for 'corruption' and 'dragon' - I felt it as an entity needed its own name to differentiate it from Ginryuu.
> 
> My intention with this fic was that the prompt would be a theme of the story itself, and the major motivator for Kurogane's Mother's actions. I also wanted to try to have a little role-reversal when it came to the relative tragedy of Kurogane and Fai's pasts - not to say that Fai's past here is not tragic, but I tried to lighten it a little from canon, while still referencing it. Similarly, I wanted to give the impression that this universe was a universe _like_ canon, where want of a few small differences, FWR's plan did not succeed. There was so much more I wanted to write but I barely finished on time as it was, so this was the best I could do. I hope you enjoyed reading, and please enjoy this year's Olympics!


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